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[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Now I’m picturing a smartly dressed butler opening the doors to a giant country mansion as he says “Presenting Lord Bandito of Slottington”

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

I don’t watch the guy, can’t stand his constant pissing and whining about how his 23rd Bonanza bonus in the last 50 spins only paid him a measly £800 on £2 stake.

Can someone summarise for me whatever the changes are we’re talking about here?

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Winningbird wrote:

I heard the RTP boosts on free play to try and make you think it can happen on real play every time. Be careful when you do eventually decide to play for real. I don’t want you to be mislead if this is the case

That’s not true, UK licensed games are specifically required to use the same RTP and RNG in free play as in real play.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Haven’t tried this one, but free play on Temple of Treasure or whatever it’s called was quite good (sadly I can’t play anything for real at the moment). I did a £20 bonus buy, mystery choice, got 10,000 minimum ways and 15 spins and it went for £200. Even choosing 15 spins at 300 minimum ways seems to usually pay quite well.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

@eejit101 so if those displays are deliberate, how are the games considered to be compliant with UKGC licensing? Am I misinterpreting what their wording means?

Game designs or features that may reasonably be expected to mislead the customer about the likelihood of particular results occurring are not permitted, including substituting losing events with near-miss losing events and simulations of real devices that do not simulate the real possibilities of the device.

Games may not falsely display near-miss results, that is, the event may not substitute one losing outcome with a different losing outcome.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Did I ever mention I consider 211 to be an unlucky number?

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

@themadchef saw you mentioned your thread to me in another one so popped over to have a read.

The poster “Mr B” and I may have disagreed about a lot, but for all I don’t buy in to conspiracy theories about rigged games or widespread dirty tricks, I definitely agree gambling is a fundamentally dangerous enough activity all on its own, even in its most legitimate forms.

Before I ever played online, I had a major FOBT habit for 10 years and before that it was the first generation of £500 jackpot B3 machines in the arcade. During that time there were many months I lost an entire month’s wages within 24 hours of getting paid. In the past, I’ve begged, borrowed and lied to friends and family to hide what I was doing and keep myself afloat. I’ve experienced the dizzying highs and nauseating lows. Incredibly, over 10 years during which I was never on an annual salary higher than £30k before tax, I managed to lose something I’d estimate in the region of £150k just on £500 jackpot machines. I had days where by noon I was a grand up, but couldn’t tear myself away from the bookies and by 5 o’clock was a couple of grand down. This was never roulette, just slots with their £20 mega spins. Despite getting myself in to debt, I always managed to stay on top of rent and critical bills. I had many, many months where I left myself four weeks from my next payday with no money for so much as a loaf of bread, but somehow through borrowing, through lies, through god knows what else, I always managed to just scrape by.

I eventually kicked my FOBT habit, but only because I discovered much lower stake, better games on the internet casinos. Online I had better control, until I started winning on the slots, found myself a few hundred pounds up and started having punts on live roulette. It was just one day late last year where I totally lost control and for the first time left myself unable to pay my rent, let alone anything else. Horrible day, I was chasing a small loss, hundred quid or something, on the live roulette and kept depositing and re-depositing, every spin it was like the wheel was consciously mocking me, landing literally next door to numbers that would have paid me big. Only stopped that night because I didn’t have any money left in the bank – didn’t even realise until I tried to redeposit for the umpteenth time and my card got declined. I signed up to Gamstop because I didn’t believe for a second I would be strong enough to resist going back.

My losses aren’t quite to the extent of yours, but I have not a penny in savings, slowly paying off what currently stands at about £15k of debt, my credit rating is so shitty even a payday loan company wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole and I find myself mid-thirties, earning good money but still always skint and probably renting for the rest of my life. The thing that really hurts me is knowing I’d be owning a nice little home if I’d saved all the money I gambled over the years, wouldn’t even need much of a mortgage.

And the silly thing is compared to some people like yourself, I’ve got off relatively easy.

Where I disagree with Mr B and those of the same opinion is I don’t think it’s right for me to blame the industry or the law for what I’ve done. I did it all because I liked it, because I was depressed for years, because playing those games was a way of both escaping the world and would give me a real adrenaline rush, like I could actually feel something. Even when I’d lost a month’s wages, it felt horrible, it made me feel sick but at least I could say I felt that. Most of the time I didn’t feel anything.

But so as you’d expect, I came to rely on slots to feel something. I’d convince myself it was relieving my stress when in fact it was the biggest cause of it.

No one ever made me do that, I did it because I was weak. One of the points I tried to make in one of Mr B’s many threads was that actually, I’d love to be able to say it wasn’t my fault, that I was manipulated by clever psychology and flashing lights, or that the games were rigged and I was playing expecting a fair chance they weren’t ever going to give me. It would be so much easier for me to emotionally deal with the damage if any of that stuff was true but it isn’t. I knew how shit the FOBTs were when I played them, I knew how unlikely it was I was going to win anything, I knew full well and very consciously that even if I did win, no matter how much I won, it would never be enough and I’d keep going back and keep spinning until I lost it all. It was always me, it was always my choice and I did it because I trained my brain over a long time to believe it was something I needed, to the extent that even I believed I couldn’t control it. But that’s bullshit. We always have a choice. The truth is if you stop doing it, nothing happens to you and if you stop doing it long enough, eventually the pathways in your brain change shape again and the urge to do it fades.

I hope you’re in a better place now, thank you for sharing your story – if there’s one thing I believe can give strength to people who are struggling and help them face what’s going on in their life, it’s knowing they’re not alone and that the anguish they feel is shared by others who understand too what it’s like.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

We all have a purpose in life. I always thought mine was to hit that 1000x Bonanza bonus I got last year, but now I understand it was really to watch last night’s Game of Thrones. Every series I ever see in future will have an automatic -1 just by comparison. Christ, I thought Breaking Bad was good.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Green2711 wrote:

Spot on! Is Mr B banned for life or is it a 1 week ban?

No idea but may I take this golden opportunity to clarify I don’t work in the gambling industry, I have no professional connection to that industry, slots are random, compulsive gamblers (including me) must accept some personal responsibility for their actions if they want any hope of recovery and my only motivation for calling out conspiracist bullshit is my personal aversion to bullshit.

…

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaan, that felt good ?

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

It’s genuine bad luck. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but 2 points on this one:

First, substituting a losing spin with a “near miss” is specifically a no-no in Gambling Commission game rules. I think it even uses the phrase “near miss” in the guidelines.

Second, I can tell you from the prototype Backinamo Slot I was building, which I can tell you as the developer was 100% random on every spin, those near misses do happen surprisingly frequently by sheer chance on a typical reelset.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

What, I didn’t warrant a mention?

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

You guys are saying don’t blame the casino operators it’s all down to individual responsibility

That’s not quite what I’ve said, or certainly it paints a false picture of the point I’ve been trying to make insofar “it’s all down to individual responsibility” would suggest a laissez-faire attitude that the industry should be a free for all with no rules or regulation and that’s categorically not a view I hold or have ever espoused.

What I do believe is that in the case of addicts / compulsive gamblers, individual responsibility is an equally important factor in breaking the cycle as getting help and any industry regulation. As long as the addict squarely blames the industry or the government and does not accept the element of behaviour on their part which can be changed, they have precisely zero chance of escaping their addiction.

Also let’s not conflate online casinos with the entirety of the gambling industry. I started gambling in arcades at a very young age too, so the role of allowing children to gamble on essentially kids versions of the games we can play online or in a proper casino does not pass me by. Had I not been able to go and play £5 jackpot fruits as a 10 year old, I might well have never developed the predilection for gambling I have, I’ll never know. I absolutely agree anyone under the age of 18 should not be allowed to gamble in any form. But I also reject I can pin any blame on an online casino for the fact I was allowed to gamble in an arcade as a child. That’s a legislative issue, not an industry one.

The position I take is that there are already adequate – arguably more than adequate – safeguards and protections in place in the adult gambling industry to protect problem players, including self exclusion, deposit and loss limits, counseling, identity checks, AML regs, KYC regs, source of wealth verifications….stuff so stringent, plenty of players here bitch regularly about how arduous it is to get through it all. If all of that isn’t enough to stop a problem gambler gambling, my argument is that it’s because that person refuses to help themselves and acknowledge that a large part of the problem is their own behaviour and thought patterns, with the corollary that refunding such people their money would neither help them nor be ethical.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Mr B wrote:

Argyl, I’m talking about an industry wide ban with HELP that is only available once.

Yes and by “help” you mean giving them their money back. I’ve laid out just some of the problems with such a system in my previous post, none of which you’ve addressed. There’s already a comprehensive range of meaningful help for gambling addicts available, just none of them involve someone else picking up their bill. Just like how no support systems for heroin addicts involve giving them back the money they spent on heroin and telling them “try to spend it on something else this time”. They don’t do that because it wouldn’t help those people or solve their problems.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

I think Mr B’s suggestion of “ban and fully refund” is both unworkable and ethically wrong.

I would say far from helping gambling addiction, it will encourage it and fraud. Addresses, names, internet connections, banks…all these things can be legitimately changed and there is so simply no foolproof way to ban someone from gambling in any form.

How does it help the addict if you give them a safety net of knowing if they go overboard by way more than they can afford, they can simply claim a full refund from the casino? Ethically, why should the casinos and game providers lose out on revenue because of a player’s conscious choice to gamble? Ethically, how is it fair on the other responsible gamblers who would pay for those refunds through reduced RTP on the games? And how many people who have no habitual interest in gambling would cheerfully take a huge punt knowing they will either win big, or be able to put their hands up and go “not my fault, guv, can’t control myself” and get their money back?

Gambling is by definition a risk based activity. All you can do is make that point clear to people before they play.

I’ve struggled with compulsive gambling, among other problems. Difference is I actually take personal responsibility for my own actions because I fundamentally on a moral level believe rights come with responsibilities. I detest the way we’re fostering a culture in this part of the world in which everyone expects every right and yet whenever someone doesn’t get what they want, everyone’s to blame except themselves. It’s a pathetic, morally weak, whiny culture of perpetual adolescence.

The help for problem gamblers is out there, but you cannot help anyone who willfully refuses to help themselves.

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

Given gambling transactions are their own spending category on credit cards, anyone who thinks using a credit card to gamble somehow keeps the fact they’re gambling “off the books” as far as their bank is concerned should think again.

I’d welcome banning credit card deposits and indeed requiring all players to undertake the verification process before they can play anything.

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