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Drone wrote…
“I’ve no idea how these machines manipulate payout
Are they truly random like a genuine roulette wheel or are they – as you hint – pseudorandom with wins frontloaded to reel in the player. If pseudorandom the stench around these machines just got worse
What are the regulations you mention?”
Drone, I’m not being churlish here I promise, please answer the question that I asked you in my post before… “Do you trust them to run a straight game, when they can control the result?”
The regulations I mentioned, I honestly have no clue, I’ve just heard them mentioned by LS Soldier on here mate. How would they regulate thousands and thousands of machines in all of the shops? Me personally, I think it’s a load of old clap trap. It’s a very shady world out there. Me, I look at the whole picture. These machines are the goose that lays the golden egg for the bookies. Look how they have tried to save them in the media, lobbying politicians etc? Can you ever remember anything like it? Look at what they have done to tens of thousands of young British men, in a mental capacity. They are crack cocaine for the gambler.
In ten/fifteen years, these machines (computer programmes), have become a humongous chunk of the bookies business. In those ten/fifteen years, we’ve seen the high street bookies turn into multi national, very very large corporations nigh on. Also think of this, during that time, as an old school horse racing fan… We’ve seen the most incredible sign up bonuses, free bets, money back if you lose etc etc, the whole nine yards. Where’s this money come from, how can they afford to be literally throwing it away? We’ve all thought it, I know I have. Well that money comes from these machines. They are a licence to print money. You don’t do all of that, making hundreds of billions in the process, on 3% take. Did the fruit machines make a tiny fraction of this, off of 85% payouts (15% take)? Did they open thousands of new shops so they could shoe horn fruit machines in? Of course they did not. These figures on pay outs, are a complete and utter pile of bullshit, surely even a blind man can see it.
The computerisation of the outcome of an event, is a truly massive thing, that the vast majority of punters, seem to be totally blind too. As an older punter, you all, like me must remember when the virtual racing first came in to the betting shops. Anyone sensible, laughed their heads off. Yeah, lets have a bet on the virtual racing which is controlled by the same bookie which I’m placing my bet with… We all laughed.
Well the kids today don’t seem to be as bright. They have grown up in an internet age. Where everything is on their phone, and they are on their phones 24/7. These machines, are just twenty years of progress from the bookies, of that virtual racing. The big problem is, people have been staking very large amounts of cash on them in some hope that they will win big. The machines are different to the virtual racing, in that they are personal to the player. You place your bet, the computer knows where you have placed your bet, and then dictates the result milliseconds later. No ones ever going to win on these machines, they never have, they never will. Why is that then? It’s not because of 97% payouts… Or mindless gambler who will just throw their money away. Who says it’s a 97% payout? Oh that’s right, it will be the same bookies who are raking hundreds of billions from them, who also control the algorithms that determines the events outcome.
What I would like to see, is a government body, go into to a back street bookies, take the FOBT away and test it. Stick £50k through it and see what happens. My guess? The **** would REALLY hit the fan.
Another way to look at it. When we place our bets on the horses, football, golf. We look at a market, we compare the prices, we can see the over round. Walk into a casino, you know the odds for each game, the game will be a game of chance, that cannot be fixed to a certain result. In both situations, the odds are slightly against you, but they are out in the open, the outcomes dictated by an event of chance. The essence of gambling essentially.
Stick £1000 in a FOBT. You are totally blind, you are relying on the honesty of whomever controls the algorithms. They ‘say’ it’s 97% payout and totally legit/random. Do you trust them?
Looking at what’s happened in the last ten years, and the physical evidence of the carnage these machines have created. I don’t, even though I’ve never been near to playing one.
I’ll place a large wager, that if ten of us from this forum drew out £1000, went to the same bookies and played it all into a FOBT one after the other, we’d be £10k down as a group inside of an hour. No ones going to win.
If betting shops have to lose staff or close because not as many machine gamblers are throwing away their benefit cash or meagre earnings in the hope of making some quick extra cash, then so be it.
It’s a complete disgrace that they prefer to bleat about their reduced profits from potentially fewer people blowing what little money they have in a few minutes than thinking that it might be good if a brake was put on people’s ability to lose all their cash so quickly.
In a lot of betting shops I visit, it’s striking how, whatever time you go in, there are always Chinese or Malaysian-looking men playing the machines, jabbering away and scurrying about placing bets on even the virtual races.
It’s very depressing. If the bookmakers want to keep their huge profits up, let them start doing what every other business is having to do these days and think about reducing their costs in other ways and investigate diversifying and streamlining their activities.
Just expecting to carry on getting rich on other people’s misery and addiction is completely wrong.
Drone, I’m not being churlish here I promise, please answer the question that I asked you in my post before… “Do you trust them to run a straight game, when they can control the result?”
Can’t answer as I’ve no idea how these machines work or what regulations there are governing them: hence my questioning of your question
The bookmakers of old I loved: they weren’t the old enemy, just other punters with a view permitted to lay the odds. Their opinion was respected and my opinion sometimes laughed at, but the gentlemanly battle was always cordial
I hate what they’ve become and if the odds they offer on these ghastly machines are more bent than ‘advertised’ or ‘regulated’ then you have my permission to take your grievances to Tracey Crouch
I have no evidence, do you?
Nausered – You don’t do all of that, making hundreds of billions in the process, on 3% take…These figures on pay outs, are a complete and utter pile of bullshit, surely even a blind man can see it.
It’s easily provable that the 3% figure is accurate by looking at the audited figures for any of the betting companies in the last 13 years. They’re always very close to that figure. Here’s Gross FOBT Yield for every single constituency in 2012. Do the maths.
When punters hear FOBT’s pay out 97% on average per spin many think it’s nonsense because it’s so counter-intuitive.
However, this is by no means the full story. The damage to stakes is not done in the profit margin but rather in the rapid and repetitive play which also ensures rapid stake degradation (i.e. £100 x 97%, £97 x 97%, £94.09 x 97% etc etc). Therefore after just 30 spins of a £100 stake (10-15 mins play) the average loss will be a whopping 60%!
The machines are also designed to come up with various ‘near miss’ scenarios for the credulous and to press the right neurological buttons for the addicted. This addictive cocktail is so powerful that in reality the most common overall ‘session’ result is a 100% loss – most players simply play until bust.
That ‘3% margin’ is totally correct – but it’s also completely irrelevant in a real-world situation.
Mike
The figures do check out. Countrywide totals are:
1,368,190,713/43,024,865,195 = 0.0318
Amazingly, Dudley North and Thirsk and Malton both have the exact same stake and profit (or loss…) from 44 machines. Similar story for everywhere with similar machine numbers.
I may be talking nonsense but surely part of the reason that machines win is that, assuming they are fair, then the true odds of each outcome are known and you are simply getting worse odds than that. Every single time. Over-rounds are built into every market but with real life events the odds offered may not reflect the true odds as it’s really anyone’s guess.
What I would like to see, is a government body, go into to a back street bookies, take the FOBT away and test it.
Never had any actual experience with them but when I worked in a shop a few years ago I was always told that the Gambling Commission can come in at any time and pretty much do just that. In reality, whether they ever do or not I have no idea but I can’t imagine it happens much.
No Drone, I have no evidence. I’ve barely even been in a betting shop since these retched machines came to fruition. My experience of the inside of the gambling industry, is twenty years ago as a croupier in Mayfair. At that time, even in places like the Ritz, the fruit machines were a huge part of the casinos take. I’d imagine they too are filled up with FOBT’s now.
I do know this, ‘they’ have always been looking for new ways to screw your money out of you, in the fastest possible time. We’ve all heard LS talk about punters as ‘arbers’ etc. As a lowly punter, we should be the ones being ‘screwed’, not the other way around. Any challenges to this status quo must be quashed. We’re all wrong uns. This is the contempt that the bookies/gambling industry hold us as punters in. It’s the general consensus in the higher levels of the gambling industry. I bet the bookies all absolutely wet their pants when Betfair came along… But the machines saved them didn’t they. They got bigger and bigger on the back of these machines. 50% of their high street take.
An example I can talk about, is being a grade 1 roulette croupier myself. In amongst the dealing staff of any casino, you will have in the main very pretty young ladies. The big roulette punters are sharks, they can read patterns in a weak dealers spin. If you are ever in a casino, and you start to win really big, your pretty little dealer will disappear. An older, uglier one will arrive. It’s their job to get that money back from you… Having a punt, to me or to you is a leisure activity, something which we do for fun. We must never forget, the people on the other side are in it for business. We are the means, to their end results. We really do not matter to them, the money in our pockets does. The internet age, and computerisation has brought lots of new opportunities for the gambling industry. Very very dangerous indeed. The goal posts got moved big style.
I was wrong about the payouts, as Betlarge and Richard have kindly pointed out. But rest assured as Betlarge showed, these computer programmes will be designed to get the punter, first compelled to play, then compelled to empty their bank account into. A pretty young lady chatting is one way to make you spend your money with abandon. A computer program designed to press buttons for an addictive mind, is just twenty steps forwards, a means to an end.
As Richard points out, he has no experience of anyone official checking any of the FOBT’s in his shop. It’s all very dodgy. The bookies learnt thirty years ago, that the best way to get a gambling addict to spend their money fast… Is to blind them with lots of events, in a short space of time. No time to think, no time to question if they can afford it, no time to even pay real attention to the event which is to be bet on. Dog race, virtual race, 2.05 from Newbury, virtual race, dog race, all in five minutes in the shops. The whole atmosphere of a betting shop is set up to make them money, poor addicts walking around like zombies spend the most, they spend it all. The FOBT is just twenty steps forwards from this. A computer programme, which you place your bet with, then the same CP determines the outcome of the event which you just bet on, a millisecond later. They talk a great game as to gamble awareness… LOL. Their whole modus operandi is the complete opposite.
These machines, were their coupe de gras. They stink, and some bad things will come to light about them over the next year or two, I’ll happily bet.
If this had come out yesterday, it would have had “April Fool” written all over it. I still have my doubts about its veracity.
It seems that some bookmakers have a new idea to recover the profits they might lose now that FOBTs have a maximum stake of £2. It involves going back to the dark ages of pencil and paper, an on-screen game every two to three minutes, with a maximum stake of £100 to £500 depending on your bookie of choice.
Is this:
A. A great way to ensure proper profits and enhanced shareholder value?
B. A great way to stick up two fingers to the government and their namby-pamby laws, and fill the BHA coffers. But ……. leading to the government going for direct government regulation of the bookies with changes to betting regulation, tax regulation, financial probity regulation, money laundering regulation every week just for the special case bookies?
C. An April Fools joke?
It’s a bit of A & B. Whatever, it’s wretched and unlikely to succeed. As for PR, I think the main bookmakers have basically given up on even pretending they’re half-decent entities nowadays.
Anyway, even hotter off the press:
Mike
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