Shake up of the gambling sites/shops.
 

I like a gamble but avoid these fixed odds machines like the plague due to my addictive personality.

Do we have sympathy for addicts?

Here? apparently not! :nono:

Yes, I have sympathy for all addicts.
I don't know if changing the rules will make much difference, TS would probably have a better view on it all.

Official line is that the machines are no different from any other betting. Front line truth is that they are quite blatantly highly addictive, people lose a fortune on them, and the people who are playing them heavily are not having much fun at all (if any).

No sympathy what so ever. Get control over your own life, and don't be controlled by the selfish greed to earn a quick bit of money.

My best mate was a gambling addict, he killed himself. The selfish bugger left his family and friends with the worst pain there is.

It's not the money people are after or addicted to, it's the "rush" they get at the end of a race or when their bet is about to come in (or get beat at the last second). Difference with betting terminals is that it's a "micro rush" repeatedly every 5 seconds. They all know that they're not going to "make a quick buck", they know they're losing money... They're just getting high :shrug:

So you're saying if we take away the money and just had friendly bets, people would be addicted to it?

The loss is attached to the high, addiction operates on an action - > reward cycle... Like training a dog by giving them a treat. The "treat" in this case being a monetary win... However, they all know that even if they win £500 one day, overall they are losing money every week.

So taking the "money flow" out of it would take the adrenaline rush out of it and stop it being addictive. Mostly. People still get hooked on crap like "candy crush" without a cash element. But in principle, the money is part of it.

However they don't think they are making money and, in fact, the heavy players know for a FACT that they can't win, because they have been playing them for years, and not making money. They'll even say, "Why do I even do this, you can't win". It's certainly not that they're naive and trying to make "easy cash"... Not many people are daft enough to not realise that the "bookie always wins". Yet they sit there day after day, spin after spin.

You can't even argue that they're chasing that elusive "big win then they'll stop"... The machines have a £500 max jackpot and these people are dropping those jackpots at least once a week. Some of them will drop 2 a day. Walk out with a grand nodding and smiling at people who think they've won big...

...go and open the machine up, and there's £1100 worth of crisp 50's :shrug:.

As a gambling addict who has never quite got to the level of problem gambler (being that I wasted every spare penny I had, rather than bill money) I would say its a bit of both.

My vice is bandits. Both online and in land casinos.

Its the rush AND the thought of maybe hitting it big. My addiction only started after a huge win (talking a few thousand). I know wins of that size are doable, having done it before (previously I had only won amounts like 200), and chase it. Both for the adrenaline rush, and for the cash.

Am currently having counselling for it as I know I could easily end up using every penny we have, which tbh, is not much at all anyway. But I always thinkl, just another big win would help us all so much when in reality, the little bits I have wasted over the years would have added up to that win a few times over

Oh also, just realised this thread is actually about the recently announced news regarding max stakes.

... ... Lol. Quite amused by the bookies bigwigs pretending that cutting the max stake from £100 to £50 will make any difference AT ALL to the amount in-shop machines take.

They're looking at roulette and blackjack? Total misdirection. The money we rake in, and the most commonly played games by FAR, are £2 max stake / £500 jackpot slots. All of our machine advertising is slots based. They have us pushing slots games constantly. Slots is where the money is, and slots are what the addicts are playing. The max stake is already £2... These proposals are to appease the public who don't understand the margins and maths of the machines, and nothing more. Will make absolutely no difference.

Very few people losing big money on £100 stake casino games these days. Few people playing them at all, tbqfh. They don't have the flashing lights and funny noises, after all.

Well yes quite. Its another case of pretending to be doing something to help addicts, to please the public... whilst still wanting to reap in the cash isn't it.

Kind of like the plain packaging on cigarettes and having them behind a screen, or raising the prices on them.

Pitiful moves, to convince the public you actually want people to stop (or in the case of casino bosses, that you want people to gamble responsibly rather than play away their life savings and pad out your pockets a bit more) whilst you pray to the gods that these silly little measures won't actually make people stop.

If the well being of a gamblers family is not at the forefront of their mind as they shovel note after note into these machines then a stupid little icon isnt going to stop these idiots.

Indeed; when the "you've been playing for 20 minutes" warning message pops up they usually just get mad about it breaking their trance, they're totally useless. The only thing they're really helpful for is for staff to identify high-value machines customers. Though that's usually obvious anyway because, as you say, you can hear the 20's being filed in one after the other. Either that or they're lumping in money from their bank card over the counter.

Removing that functionality MIGHT actually make a small difference, since most banks have cashline withdrawal daily limits. But it would be a forced stop rather than them actually wanting to so what's the point.

But yeah... I've kicked a woman out because she had 2 kids standing outside in the cold for half an hour and I wanted no part in that ****. But she probably just went elsewhere :shrug:

You aint that bad at all ts, your actions deserve applause...what i find weird is these people who have about 50 pound down on one spin on roullette...hit the button..then say oh thats going to be number 12...and it is...ive never understood that...sonething to do with where ball starts or something...to me it shows the machine is rigged...

Great points made by Alf,

My brother in-law runs a casino and said those machines are like crack cocain.

On the other side I know a guy who is addicted, one example of his disgusting behaviour.

Told a guy he knew thru boxing that he had his rent money taken, the guy lent him 500 he lost that and then went back and got another 200

A friend said are you going to pay him back?, he said no he is a mug for lending it to me.

They're "pseudorandom" in that you never know when they're going to pay out, but not truly random like a physical roulette wheel, the number is just picked by a random number generator. But the number is picked as soon as the button is pressed and the animation of the wheel spinning is just for "fun" and to make it feel like real roulette... On the oldest version (which they keep around alongside new ones because some of the older guys don't like it to change) it was literally just a pre-recorded video for each number, so people who have been playing it for a long time know which video is playing as soon as the ball drops, and therefore know which number it's going to land on.

Also means that the game result is available on the machine log on the staff computers as soon as the button is pressed, too, even on the new versions, so if you want to really mess with someone's head you can shout out the number to them before it lands and they start to think that it's being controlled :joker:. It genuinely isn't, we can just see the result as soon as it's generated before the cartoon plays.

It must be linked to how much it can pay out on that day...i sometimes put a pound in and pick 10 numbers on 100/1 roullette...i win often doing that and walk away happy wirh my tenner...one day i didnt..won...then kept playing a pound a tine....4 number 43s in 6 spins...what are the odds?...lost the 10er

Wish they would do something about golf clash...i keepp gambling all my coins on one match.

I tried poetry many moons ago - never done any since. addictive I am not :joker:

It must be hard for a bard.

nothing is hard
its all so simple
they gave me the red card
that was ample.
now just silent
and it is bliss
say nothing is more violent
village people I already miss.

Some play on line casino
I prefer a saturday beano
Click after click after click after click
Or bus journey home avoiding being sick.

Wake up on sunday its all the same.
Look in my pocket, not even the bus fare hame.

What a game.

This actually happened to a friend of mine while we were at Uni - he had been home for the weekend, was getting the train to Glasgow and then the bus from there beck to his Uni town. He got off the train in Glasgow... then spunked everything in his wallet and back account on the machines. Every last penny, completely stranded. He had to call his dad and tell him that he had taken all of his money out in cash and lost his wallet :facepalm:.

Ive never lost all my money that way, but i was out in london on my own mixing with the tartan army during the last scotland game, i was that pissed i gòt bored of all the scottish songs and tried talking to some blokes from grimsby.

Ended up being clattered in the head from behind by someone. Evacuated the area, without knowing if i hit the deck first...no charge in my phone, looked in my wallet, zilch...no bank card, money, train ticket.

Had to walk in a pub minging to beg for electricity....only thing going through my mind was, Grimsby, ****ing Grimsby.