Australia’s online poker players may have received a reprieve from death row thanks to the efforts of a Liberal Democrat senator.

In August, Australia’s federal government approved the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016, which clarified national laws to restrict online gambling to sports betting only.

Senator David Leyonhjelm (pictured) led a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful effort to exempt poker from the list of prohibited online activities. Anticipating defeat months before the bill’s passage, he advised the nation’s poker players to “screw the government, get yourself a [virtual private network] and an offshore account and carry on as you were.”

Fast forward to Monday, and Leyonhjelm posted an online notice declaring “Victory for online poker on the cards.” The notice claimed that, following further lobbying, the federal government “has advised that it is ‘favorably disposed’ to reforms that would exempt online poker players from illegal offshore wagering laws.”