Poker Machine Addiction Stories

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Psychology of addiction. The mere sight of a slot machine can trigger a chemical response in the gambling addict's brain in the same way the thought of cocaine stimulates a drug addict.

Updated April 26, 2020 20:17:21

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on so many Australians.

If you or anyone you know needs help:

• Lifeline on 13 11 14
• Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858
• Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36

Lives have been lost, jobs and businesses have been wiped out, and individuals have had to come to grips with being isolated from family and friends.

No industry has felt the strain more than pubs, clubs and casinos. From March 23, they had to close their doors at short notice, throwing the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of Australians into turmoil.

But for some Australians these closures have proved a blessing rather than a curse.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform says more than $1 billion has been saved in poker machine losses in the past five weeks.

ABC Investigations has been in contact with hundreds of people affected by problem gambling, and we asked whether coronavirus shutdowns have changed gambling habits.

Many of them have described the past five weeks as one of the most peaceful periods they can remember.

Here are three of their stories.

The mineworker

Corey* is a mineworker from Queensland. He knows too well the pain that a gambling addiction can cause.

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His father lost the family home through betting on the horses when Corey was a small boy.

'All these years later, it still causes fights in my family,' he said.

'Knowing my family history, I became a staunch anti-gambler. I'd never even bet on the horses.'

The 29-year-old avoided the issues his father had. Until July last year.

'My father got diagnosed with a form of dementia and I went into a dark place. I started drinking heavily and began to play the pokies.'

The Queenslander had been working hard as a fly-in fly-out mine worker and was saving for a home.

Within two months of taking up the pokies his $25,000 deposit was gone.

'I'd wake up at 10:00am, go to a pub or club, and play the pokies, sometimes until 3:00am.'

He would repeat this pattern during his week off in the city, before flying back to a mining camp to work for two weeks.

After another two months, he sold his prized 4WD for $17,000 to feed his new habit.

Soon that cash windfall was gone. With no money in the bank, and nothing else to sell, he started borrowing money.

By the time the lockdown started Corey owed the banks and same-day lenders close to $20,000.

'COVID-19 has been a blessing for me, with pubs, clubs and casinos closed, I've been completely unable to play the pokies at all,' he said.

He's now putting aside 80 per cent of his income to pay off his loans and feels that he has his gambling under control.

'Since the lockdown started, I created an online gambling account and put $100 into it. I lost that $100 straight away, so I haven't put any money back into it since,' Corey said.

'I'm hoping this is the end of my eight-month gambling habit. It's cost me so much, from my health and happiness, to pushing away friends for the sake of gambling — it's really impacted me on every level and set me way back financially.'

The mother

For Sonia, the 58-year-old mother of a pokies addict, the lockdown has been one of the best months of her life.

'It has been a blessing for me and my son because he's suddenly not being tricked, deceived and robbed by the poker machines,' she said.

Sonia's son John* has twice attempted suicide in relation to his gambling addiction.

'We are both experiencing a peace we haven't experienced for over a decade. I'm able to live each day without the constant fear that my son will try to take his life again.'

'He told me that God's answered his prayers with the lockdown, that a heavy weight has been lifted off him and that he feels like he has been set free.'

The 28-year-old has MS and is on disability pension. Sonia says at around 2:00am on a Saturday he goes to a local Sydney pub or club knowing his pension will be in his bank account by then.

'By the time the sun comes up he's lucky if there's anything left in his account,' Sonia said.

Once John blows all his money, Sonia has to make the most awful choice. Does she give him more money to help him get through the week knowing he will probably put it through the pokies?

Invariably she gives in.

'People ask why I give him money. It's because I'm scared that he might commit a crime to pay for his habit,' she said.

'You have to realise the habit overrules normal thinking. Do you know how many people are in jail because of a pokie addiction? I'm scared he could end up in jail.'

Sonia says she's on the verge of losing her house and has borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from the banks and from family to pay for her son's habit.

She says John has self-excluded from hundreds of venues, but they continue to let him in to gamble away his pension and his mother's money.

Sonia says she has used the lockdown to pay back money she's borrowed.

'In the past five weeks I haven't had to give him money. But it's so much more than the money, it's the emotional rollercoaster as well.'

Australia has the highest gambling losses per head of population in the world. Sonia hopes the lockdown will lead to a rethink on poker machine policy.

Poker Machine Addiction Stories

Over the past 25 years, she has held a number of senior positions in the manufacturing industry, and says that the absence of poker machines is not just good for the families of addicts, but for small business as well.

'Over $6.5 billion is lost to poker machines each year in NSW alone. If this money was spent in small business the economy would thrive and many jobs would be generated.'

Do you know more?

Please fill out the ABC Investigations gambling story tips form, or text message the team via the WhatsApp or Signal mobile apps on 0418 347 462

Slot Machine Gambling Addiction Stories

.

The small businessman

Andrew runs a small business in rural Queensland.

Much of his work is done on the road, and when he drives into a new town, he finds it difficult not to pass the local pub.

'If I'm driving for work, something in me gets triggered and I will drop into the pub and start putting money through the pokies,' he said.

The businessman finds himself being drawn to something he hates.

'I can't stand the pokies. But I started playing them 20 years ago when I was struggling with anxiety.'

Andrew suffered trauma as a child that led to anxiety in adulthood. In his late teens he started drinking, then playing the pokies, as he tried to deal with his past experiences.

'It terrifies me to think how much I have lost. Outside my food, my rent and my phone bills, I was probably putting around 60 per cent of my income through the machines.'

He says in the past month he's felt more at ease than any other time in the past two decades.

'This isolation has been an absolute godsend. Prior to the pandemic I was still visiting pokie rooms two or three times a week, but in the past five weeks I haven't even thought about pokie machines,' Andrew said.

'Prior to this, my anxiety levels were up and down constantly. Now, I'm so much more relaxed and less anxious.

'Today I had a beer and put $20 on the horses on my phone and I was content with that. Before I could pour $3,000 into the pokies in a couple of hours.'

Andrew is worried about what might happen when the pubs and clubs reopen.

'I do have concerns about what happens down the track, but my hope is that my time away from the pokies has given me strength and gets me to see what life is like without them.'

*Not their real names

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Topics:gambling, clubs-and-associations, hospitality, covid-19, australia, sydney-2000, qld

First posted April 26, 2020 04:47:10

Australians lose A$20 billion on gambling every year, $11 billion of which goes on poker machines in pubs and clubs. Why, then, are pokies so attractive? And why do we spend so much on them?

Ubiquity is one reason. The high intensity – the rapid speed of operation and relatively high stakes of betting up to $10 per “spin” – is another.

But there’s also a more insidious mechanism at work here: the basic characteristics of poker machines, combined with constantly refined game features, stimulate the brain in a way that, in many cases, leads to addiction with symptoms similar to those associated with cocaine use.

Poker machines cultivate addiction by teaching the brain to associate the sounds and flashing lights that are displayed when a punter “wins” with pleasure. And since the pattern of wins, or rewards, is random, the “reinforcement” of the link between the stimuli and pleasure is much stronger than if it could be predicted.

Into the machine

Poker machines, invented in the late 19th century, were originally mechanical, usually with three reels and a fixed and limited number of symbols available for display on the win line. Contemporary pokies are fully computerised. Usually housed in a retro-designed box, they refer to the old-fashioned simplicity of their predecessors. But they are as chalk and cheese compared to their mechanical forebears.

Today, the gambling machine industry employs an army of engineers, programmers, composers and graphic designers to produce increasingly sophisticated games and machines, with more ways of persuading people to part with their cash.

At the heart of the modern pokie is a series of random number generators. These are constantly operating and, when the button is pushed, the answer is instantly known. Each number corresponds to a “reel” symbol – pokies still appear to have reels that roll around when the button is pushed, but this is an illusion.

In Australia, unlike some other jurisdictions, the order of symbols on each of the visual reels must be constant, but the number of symbols can be different on each reel. This includes winning symbols.

Old, mechanical pokies had a limited number of “stops” because of the limitations of physical space. Electronic pokies have no such limitations. And the difference is profound. A mechanical pokie with three reels, 20 symbols on each reel, including one prize symbol, would have winning odds of 1/20x1/20x1/20, or one in 8,000.

A contemporary pokie will often have major prize odds of one in 10 million or more. The number of symbols on each reel is not limited by physical space, so the odds of a major win can be tweaked by limiting the number of winning symbols on certain reels.

A five-reel game may have two winning symbols on each of the first three reels, each of 60 symbols in total. The last two reels may have only one winning symbol, with 80 total symbols. This configuration would produce odds of 2/60x2/60x2/60x1/80x1/80, equal to one in 230,400,000.

This maths is at the heart of machine design. A slot game is just a spreadsheet. But it’s a spreadsheet with a lot of enhancements.

Tricking the brain

These configurations will regularly produce “near misses”. These occur when winning symbols appear on some lines, but not all. Experimental work has revealed that the brain stimulus produced by such “near misses” can be almost as significant as those produced by a win. The level of reinforcement is thus dramatically increased, without any need for the machine’s operator to actually pay out.

Current pokies also allow multiline bets, whereby users can select all available lines to bet on in a single spin. Mechanical machines were limited to a single line of three reels. Pokies now allow users to bet on 50 or more lines, configured from the video display of five reels and three lines.

The line across the middle is one such line, as are those above and below that line. But patterns of symbols are available in bewildering arrangements, combining lines and reels and multiplying the minimum bet by many times. A one-cent credit value game can thus be configured to allow at least a 50-cent minimum bet per spin if 50 lines are selected.

Most regular users report that their preferred style of use is “mini-max” – that is, the minimum bet with maximum lines. In a strange way, this reveals risk-averse behaviour. There’s nothing worse than seeing a win come up on a line you’re not playing, as a regular pokie user once explained to me.

But regular users will also increase their stakes when they can. This is to provide for the possibility of bigger payouts, or in some cases because they believe – incorrectly – that doing so will increase the chances of a win.

Pokies also allow the credits bet per line to be multiplied, often by up to 20 times. Thus, a one-cent machine becomes a device capable of allowing bets of $10 per spin. Each spin can take as little as three seconds.

For this reason, the Productivity Commission calculated that such machines could easily average takings of up to $1,200 per hour. But this is an average, and it’s not uncommon to observe people spending $400 or more on poker machines in as little as ten minutes.

Machines that accept banknotes allow significant amounts to be “loaded up”. In New South Wales, pub and club pokies can accept $7,500 at any one time.

The other capability provided by multiline poker machines is a phenomenon known as “losses disguised as wins”. This allows users to experience a reward from the game even when they’ve actually lost money.

If you bet on each of 50 lines at one cent per line and win a minor prize on one line (say, 20 credits), for instance, the machine will provide suitable reinforcement – sounds, lights and sometimes a congratulatory message – and acknowledge the credits won. But you’ve actually lost 30 cents.

Poker Machine Addiction Stories Videos

This allows the amount of reinforcement delivered to the user to be magnified significantly – often doubled. Thus, the user feels like they’re winning quite regularly. In fact, they’re losing.

Poker Machine Addiction Stories Pdf

So what does all this stimulation do? Brain chemicals, particularly dopamine, are central to this process. Brain imaging has shown in recent years that the pattern of dopamine release that occurs during a gambling session is strikingly similar to that of cocaine and other addictions.

Poker Machine Addiction Stories Free

Poker machines are essentially addiction machines that have been developed over a long period of time to be as attractive to their users as drugs are to theirs.

Poker Machine Addiction Stories Youtube

This article is part of our special package on poker machines. See the other articles here: