Greg Jericho of Grog’s Gamut used to be a casino croupier. He describes his own experiences of observing chronic gamblers and how poker machines are especially designed to exploit their addiction (even more than the rest of what casinos offer), and crunches some figures on what clubs with pokies don’t actually put back into their communities.
He doesn’t mention how poker bandits in pubs stifle live entertainment venues and thus contribute a large share towards making us all, collectively, that little bit more dull and socially shrivelled as more and more entertainment is corralled towards the lowest common denominator of the telly, but that’s another reason that I, personally, hate the damn things.
Wilkie, Xenophon and anybody else willing to make pokies less attractive as revenue raisers, and help make pubs and clubs more genuine community gathering centres again, gets a big thumbs up from me.
There’s really little to add to grog’s analysis, apart from to nod heads in furious agreement.
It’s interesting to see just how pernicious the pokies are, compared to more traditional forms of gambling entertainment such as casino tables and horse racing. At least there is an element of skill in the other games, it’s not simply mindless rat in a cage press the buttons for the chemical hit stuff. And with horse racing (cruel as some people may think it), I suspect it employs a helluva lot of people.
As a tangent to the casino croupierage story greg tells, I was desperate for a job in the early 90s, and applied for a job at Crown Casino on the tables. At the second interview, after the aptitude test, they started telling us what a wonderful opportunity Crown was, and that they didn’t even charge us for the eight weeks training. I put my hand up and asked did that mean we didn’t get paid for the training? The bright smiling scumbag said yes but it it was wonderful because we’d have a license to work in any casino in Victoria, it was an investment in our futures. I told her that that was clearly illegal under existing work laws and was unconscionable, and left. A few others left too…
Money doesn’t have a social conscience, and neither do out legislators. The liquor licencing laws as well.
Count me as also on board with this one TT. It seems to me that Wilkie’s move, while entirely supportable, could be strengthened.
If for example the machines were set to extend the “roll loop” and advise the persons’ net trading position, and losses over the last day, week and month, then the machine would be a lot less attractive. A part of the conduct is the constant press/reinforcement loop and if this slows down, it forces people to make a more active decision to bet again, rather than to bet reflexively. It would also impose a constraint on the amount anyone could lose over a given time period.
Another option might be to rig the machines to shutdown at random intervals for random amounts of time (say between 40 and 90 minutes) — so that people couldn’t develop “favourite machines” or get it into their heads that they could recover their losses by continuing to play. Again, this would limit how much people could lose in some settings, continually remind people how long they were spending at the machines and force a fresh decision to continue rather than allowing continuing incremental time extensions. Every machine should “chime” at 5 minute intervals with “you have now been playing for [value] minutes”. After an hour, the machine could start giving details of gambling recovery groups that were available. Speaking as someone who a long time ago was involved in sales, this paradigm is psychologically ugly for repeat business.
Wilkie and Xenophon get a thumbs up and a cheer from me, also. I have never liked poker machines for their sencelessness.
When my family moved into the house where we have lived for the last 14 years, the lady next door was being forced out with a mortgage foreclosure sale. I was told be all neighbours around that the wife had put all of the couples money through poker machines. The Husband committed suicide in the garage up against our side fence as a consequence, and the wife was put out on the street.
I am at present watching the press conference with Andrew Wilkie brought on by the spineless accusations against him regarding behaviour as a cadet in the 80′s. I share his view that this is part of a smear campaign to discredit him for his stand on poker machines.
I can only hope that this initiative to limit the damage caused by poker machines eventually flows on to their complete elimination. I am confident that once sporting clubs are stripped of this lazy and destructive form of fund raising they will develop far better methods to fund their operations that are creative and stimulate far better entertainments for which people will be only too pleased to pay for.
At least there is an element of skill in the other games
Roulette, keno? No skill there. But they aren’t addictive like the pokies.
I can only agree with the sentiments about, and highly recommend two (2) movies –
Croupier starring Clive Owen, that chronicles much of the amazing behaviour of gamblers addicted to losing.
Owning Mahowny starring Philip Seymour Hoffman that tells the staggering true story of a lowly bank assistant manager who blew an amazing amount of money through a mind-boggling gambling addiction.
I work in Family Law, and I have seen many instances of significant sums simply vanishing due to gambling losses.
Any form of gambling that says “bet another very small amount and you may recover all your losses” is particularly dangerous, especially when you can make one small bet every few seconds.
The rules should be expanded to limit the rate at which money can be “invested” on a single machine. Set the figure low enough to make it hard for a pensioner to blow the pension in a single night?
In some ways it may make sense to put a lower limit on single bets. Pensioners may be a lot less vulnerable if they could only bet $20/time and had to wait 5 minutes between bets.
Looks like the sleazies are trying to bribe Oakenshott just in case slagging Wilkie doesn’t work.
Perhaps they’re trying to btibe Oakeshott, maybe they’re not. Lets see how he votes.
I don’t understand gambling addiction. I’m too scared of losing what little money I have. I’d be lucky if I play the pokies once every two years and if I win I lewve the pub/club right away and never put through more than $10 on the pokies.
I do Scratchies once every couple of months and if I win I pocket the money if its more than $2. (Won $5 yesterday,)
But I feel for people in the grip of this terrible addiction and support any laws to help them.
Just remindin’.
(It’s kind of torture to watch him struggling with his earpieces, though.)
Perhaps this is too simplistic, but I’ve always been of the view that if a pub needs pokies to survive then it’s doing something wrong.
I remember going out with my father when I was a teenager, before pokies were legal in Qld. A friend of his drove us down over the border into Tweed Heads. The club we went to was full of Queensland pensioners, who were busy putting their entire pension through the one-armed bandits.
When they became legal in Queensland, I noticed that some of the biggest clubs with the most machines were in the lowest socio-economic areas (such as Ipswich). People who are living in poverty have the deck stacked against them so much that they think the only way they can get out from under is to win money (lotto, pokies, horses, dogs etc). Pokies particularly prey on the most vulnerable sections of society and give them false hope that a big win is on the way. It’s very sad.
I also agree that it’s ruined just about every venue. You can’t go anywhere to have a quiet drink with friends without the incessant noise from the pokies. I just don’t go out any more.
Among other things its a regressive tax that is rendered semi-visble and allows the governments to avoid criticism for raising taxes,
Can’t have taxes can we?
Oh and just how good was Grog’s post?
Better by than most in the MSM by ‘esteemed’ journos?
Award winning potential?
HD — True dat — Grog’s piece is a tour-de-force. It should be in tl;dr territory, but I read it all anyway!
Over here we don’t have pokies but it hasn’t done anything to stop the closure of pubs. There’s no such thing as licensed clubs in WA either so no cheap meals and booze for us. I lived in Sydney a while back and found the pub and club culture to be have far more variety than Perth.
I think, like many things, some people develop serious problems that can damage others however I’m also reticent to ban anything that doesn’t clearly pose a risk to many. I don’t oppose restrictions on activities or products that may have the potential to harm some people but outright bans should be avoided at all costs. My point is that I’d like to be able to play the pokies every now and then but I can’t, the decision has been made for me.
D’you think? I usually assume that anyone who writes ‘tl;dr’ is a rampant solipsist with the attention span of a cricket.
Thanks for the link Tigtog, it is always worthwhile to hear the views of someone from within the gambling industry.
While I definitely support Wilkie and Xenophon’s efforts on this matter, it is clear that they are fighting a losing battle. Indeed another, arguably more effective measure to reduce problem gambling recommended by the Productivity Commission was $1 bet limits. Bet limits reduce the rate at which gamblers can lose money, as aluded to in the linked article. However, this issue seems to have fallen off the table entirely.
And while it is easy to blame industry for spending up on a scare campaign, successive governments are also to blame for both their, and the clubs’ structural reliance on pokie revenues. Livingstone & Adams put it well:
I can’t stand pokies and I never play them. I do like black jack or poker if I happen to wander into a casino (approx twice a year!).
However – the push by Wilkie is classic lefty nanny-statism that I hate even more than pokies. If you don’t like pokies don’t play them. Wilkie should rack-off and stop trying to tell everyone how to behave.
And if you don’t like your mum playing them, then shut the fuck up, wait in the car, and don’t take it for granted that you’re getting fed tonight.
The Whitlams had it right. Blow Up the Pokies. There was a show on the ABC set in a pub (can’t remember what it was called) but I remember cheering when the pub owner after seeing the same junkie who couldn’t afford it pouring more money into the machine drag the machine out onto the street and take to it with a baseball bat.
I’ve been an avid computer/video game player for a long long time. I do understand the lure of the machine (which is why I steer clear of pokies, never stuck a coin in one, never will.)
You look at modern video games and then look at the fidelity (or lack thereof) of the audio visual displays. There’s a reason they sound and look they way they do. It’s to get you into a flow/feedback cycle so you keep doing what it wants you to. Unlike the best video games you don’t play poker machines, they play you.
Good to see Joh Bjelke-Peterson(RIP) was visionary , in his opposition to pokies.
Wayne Goss said ” “Introducing poker machines to give clubs a fair go was Labor Party policy for a long time and we implemented it.”
QLD is worse off, due to the ALP.
Just another example.
Gambling really is just a very civilised way to mug someone.
Reading Grog’s piece reminded me of one of the other horrors that worried me when I was unemployed. I would have allowed myself to be breached to the point of starvation rather than work at a casino. One of my friends worked as a dealer for two years. He refuses to talk about it.
This
” doesn’t mention how poker bandits in pubs stifle live entertainment venues and thus contribute a large share towards making us all, collectively, that little bit more dull and socially shrivelled as more and more entertainment is corralled towards the lowest common denominator of the telly”
is a damned good point. The clubs talk endlessly about their need for poker machines to support local sport. At what cost though, and would local sport really suffer if the clubs were not their? But most definitely the money that they suck in is at the expense of every other entertainment in the community. Almost worst of all is that I suspect that club patronage is waining overall, and they are becoming more dependent on poker machines for basic financial viability than they ever have in the past. Which means that those gormless people who are sucked into the poker machine’s influence are the essential lifeblood slowing this steady sporting club slide into anachronistic irrelevence.
When I think about it sports are thriving despite the large, principly Rugby Football oriented, clubs, and this new vibrance is the exact antithesis of what clubs are now all about: average to bad food; lounging; dinking; smoking; and poker machine gambling.
“There was a show on the ABC”
“Love is a Four Letter Word” largely filmed at the Courthouse Hotel in Newtown.
During the 80′s I lived in the Coomealla area (near Wentworth) and we had lots of ‘friends’ from SA come visit us regularly. A visit to the Coomealla or Wentworth club was a must for them. Meals were really cheap but excellant quality. Subsidised by the pokies.
It was well known around the district that many Blockies had walked off their properties in the past having succumbed to the pokies.
During the time I was there, buses full of gamblers from SA began to stream over the border as organised tours swamped the two closest pokie clubs to Adelaide.
I was back living in SA when the weak bastards finally legalised pokies in 1994. The amount of money streaming into NSW would have been a concern. We took a lot of it back in dope money, probably still are. They took our fair share of water too but that’s another story.
About 7 years ago, one of the pubs here got an award for their bistro, proudly displayed where you order food. I congratulted the manageress, well deserved etc, and suggested she get rid of that shit out there , nodding to the pokies room, and install extra dining area. She couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
The pokies room is still full of desperados but the food has gone off the favorites list and the front bar rarely has anyone in it. Blow up the pokies.
What a sad indictment that not only have the gamblers lost their cars, they’re also forced to share one bicycle between them.
@15 Oh Dr Cat, no need to be uncharitable now. It could just be that my eyes can’t take the strain of reading long screeds on screen, and so it breaks into my concentration. Now if somebody could make the Internet available in a print edition, it would be a different story…
Another reason why I could never get addicted to pokies, I guess…eyes hurty!
Whilst I agree with Wilkie & Xenophon in principle I don’t think the pre-commitment idea is going to work, it’s far too complicated.
I think they should limit the single bet to a maximum of,say 20 cents in pubs and clubs and consider only allowing machines to operate for a maximum of 6 hours in any twenty-four hour period.
Oh, and JUMPNMCAR @20: don’t forget that it was the Bjelke Petersen government (Russell Hinze) that allowed TAB betting in pubs so that the drinkers didn’t have to leave the bar to bet on the horses/dogs etc.
Not often that I would say Joh Bjelke-Petersen was right but he had a point about keeping the pokies out of Queensland.
I don’t see how pre-commitment is going to work for addicted gamblers; if you have just ripped off your boss for $500 that presumably becomes your pre-commitment.
Much more effective would be to limit the single bet per machine to,say, 20 cents in all venues except perhaps casinos and /or limit the time that clubs and pubs are able to open their gambling lounges to,say, six hours per day (4pm to 10pm.)
Dr Cat, I’m with Mercurius on this one. Particularly when the first sentence tips you off that it’s going to be a barely coherent rant and there’s minimal punctuation. (Grog’s post is not in those categories, btw.)