Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Roulette machines: the crack cocaine of gambling (Guardian)
Article in the G2 section of today's Guardian:
Tags for Forum Posts: Betting, FOBT, Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, shops
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Wit? Clive, I don't know why you bother. The readership has gone south obviously since FOBTs were big news.
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Permalink Reply by maggie on
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Another interesting article in the Guardian with a different take on betting and drug dealing........http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-machines-dr...
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Almost ripped word for word from years of debate on HoL... No?
They missed the even easier trick of how you can go into one bookie and bet one way, the one next door and bet the other. Arsenal to win, Arsenal to lose. But of course you can't do that all day.
Also I think it exposes a problem in the technology. These machines are supposed to be a "view" of a remote game somewhere else. I would argue that if it's not possible for two machines to bet on the same game running "remotely" at the same time then the technology used fails to meet the requirements of the legislation.
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Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on
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In the ladbrokes next to wood green tube station you can often find a guy who comes in with a gang of security around him, he puts in 2 - 3k a day. Believe me, those things do a lot of money laundering.
Drinking in brown bags whilst gambling accepted, anguished wails of lost child benefit happening every five minutes and all the men hitting the machines regularly, with scuffles and and fights breaking out every day. Ladbrokes usually never call the police even if this involves spitting and physical violence, or threats to kill because the staff are incentivised not cause mr Ladbrokes any planning problems for the next shop to open with the council.
Some times you get a Muslim bloke that comes in, gambles a bit to scout out the weak ones, gives them some spending money, when that's gone offers Allah As a solution and probably eventually from there grooms them for something more sinister.
Increasingly little old ladies toter in for some company and then blow everything they had in the purse and walk out shell shocked.
It's horrific. Spend an afternoon in there and I challenge you to not come out seriously distressed.
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fpr Some serious 'projecting' going on here - my advice would be to start a sentence like this with 'in my humble opinion...' ... .. ..''Some times you get a Muslim bloke that comes in, gambles a bit to scout out the weak ones, gives them some spending money, when that's gone offers Allah As a solution and probably eventually from there grooms them for something more sinister.''
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Contentious that one, I appreciate that. Pure speculation on my part, possibly made worse by previous experience of working with vulnerable people who attend mosque's and who have received things for 'free' in them.
He may well be a gambling fellow who is very good natured and after encouraging people to gamble with his money, he does his best to befriend to help them find a better path.
I accept that. In the bowels of hell it's rare to find a saint or a Muslim version of a saint but possibly he is.
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Again, the fights are over a particular machine. They are primed to "pay out" in a way that makes them addictive so someone who has just put £500 into a machine and lost it all knows that if he puts another £100 in it may pay out big. Does this meet the requirement of a "remote game going on at another location" when the payouts are tied to behaviour on a particular machine?
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The payouts are random, just like the real casino, the house could win all night some nights and it wouldn't make any difference to the next night. The violence isn't usually over a machine it's against the machine or the shop. The gamblers try to break the machines when the machines have broke them.
Sometimes because everyone has lost so much money everyone is edgy so just a little impoliteness can cause a massive over reaction. The guys in there have spent their whole life savings, they are bitter but like zombies returning to the kill, they can't help themselves. They lost their life in the shop and they are compelled to keep returning to where they lost it all.
There will be a simple evolutionary reasons why people do it and no doubt Ladbrokes knows but the gamblers can't stop themselves. They turn up just to sit near the machines when they have no money. Kind of like a dog returning to its dead owner, just waiting and waiting for their old life to be returned.
The ability to self exclude from all machines and free hypnotherapy would be a life saver for most gamblers but the government doesn't want this, the taxation system depends on this form of human exploitation. Instead the hypnotic marketing repetition of subtle positive voices or visual clues is used instead to enslave the lonely, weak or foolish.
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OK, gamblers believe that certain machines are more likely to pay out than other machines. Watch how they shun a machine that has just paid out big in favour of one that has not paid out for a while.
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Yeah that kind of superstition and total lack of understanding is still around. Most of the gamblers don't understand the maths either and you see them placing a chip on the every square on the roulette table and hence guaranteed to lose. You get black jack players who make such stupid calls every time they may as well just give the house the deeds to theirs and be done with it. The worst type of gambler thought is the one that thinks they know all the tricks and that with that knowledge the house can be beaten.
As I've said before, there comes a time when every gambler wants to self exclude themselves forever. We have the technology but not the political will and that is the most heinous crime of all.
Imagine if we had the technology to voluntarily free all heroine addicts from the temptation of street dealers and there wasn't the political will to do so, currently the neglect for these lost souls is really criminal in my mind.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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For people who've missed it, there's an article in today's Guardian (17 October 2015) by Michal Safi.
"Ka-Ching: pokies documentary reveals what makes the machines so addictive", could do more than confirm people's worst fears about gambling machines. It claims that very sophisticated psychological manipulation is being practised on the punters.The Australian research echoes issues in the UK. For example the idea that gamblers are solely "responsible". So it always irritates me when I see brightly coloured posters in the windows of betting shops where - as in the photo below - a betting shop presents themselves as wanting their customers to "gamble responsibly" and "stay in control". Safi's article about an ABC documentary "Ka Ching? Pokie Nation" suggests this is exactly what the machines are carefully designed to avoid.
John McMullan raised an interesting question in this thread back in 2013. He asked what was the point of discussing the issue when it was no longer in the public spotlight. As he put it, "the readership has gone south obviously since FOBTs were big news."
Well, perhaps the ABC documentary will shine a new temporary spotlight and again make this big news.
But there's another reason. Which is that somebody has to keep raising it. Especially since we have so-called "regeneration" plans and reports which appear to substantially ignore gambling. And the use of gambling to launder drugs money and other criminal funds. For example, I couldn't find any mention of gambling or bookies in the report "It Took Another Riot" chaired by Stuart Lipton. This fundamentally flawed document appears to remain the blueprint for the Council's failing strategy. Similarly, I found only two brief references to drugs - both superficial.
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