AUSTRALIA'S two biggest retail groups — Woolworths and Coles Myer — have over the past two years gained a 6.4 per cent stake in the $9.5 billion national hotel and club gaming machine market, as a result of their continuing battle for dominance of the liquor retail market. Woolworths has grown into one of the biggest gaming machine operators in the country with 10,722 pokies — nearly 6000 of them in Victoria — because of anomalies in licensing laws, particularly in Queensland, that link ownership of liquor retail shops with hotel ownership. With most big hotels come gaming machines. Woolworths chief executive Roger Corbett has spent $1.7 billion buying Australian Leisure & Hospitality and Taverner Hotels to boost its liquor store portfolio, and this has also produced a very lucrative sideline in the gaming sector.