[nomadking]

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

Once a newsagent had a copy of the gaming machine industry magazine on the shelf and I remember some of the articles including

• "remote" access to the machine so payout can be adjusted within limits - e.g. better payouts for your regulars/mates
• psychologists to work out patterns to hook players and keep them playing
• having non-payout machines that could be placed where young people could play them (not gambling, no controls) to get them used to playing so they would use real gaming machines later.

As someone who was hooked on the older fruit machines I know how easy it is to make just one more play. And bookies have little incentive to control punters playing beyond keeping their license and general goodwill.

These machines are now even worse with bigger stakes and faster plays and no human to say "enough".

I'd also like to see advertising for gambling banned or more strictly controlled. Treat the same as tobacco or alcohol advertising and sponsorship.

From Parliamentary briefing paper dated 23rd Oct 2018.

At the then Government’s request, the ABB commissioned research to assess the effectiveness of the November 2003 code of practice in providing protection against problem gambling and to measure and explain levels of problem gambling amongst FOBT users. The subsequent report by Europe Economics was published in April 2005.
...
1.8.2 Problem gamblers characteristically participate in a variety of forms of gambling, and it has not been statistically possible through this research to identify any one form of gambling as causing or aggravating problem gambling. There is no evidence in this study which suggests that FOBTs are closely associated with problem gambling.
...

A June 2006 follow-up report said that FOBTs were “not more associated with problem gambling than any other form or forms of gambling”.

In a June 2013 letter to the Secretary of State, the Commission set out its formal advice on the triennial review.42 On gambling-related harm, the Commission observed:
...
The Commission acknowledged that there was a “serious case” to answer in relation to B2s but said a precautionary reduction in stakes was “unsupported by the available evidence”

In December 2016, GambleAware commissioned further evaluation of the Regulations. This was at the request of the RGSB.
The research was published in January 2017. The authors concluded: “Generally, our findings do not support the proposition that nudging players towards lower stakes mitigated harm or made play more responsible.” In attempting to mitigate harm, they said it might be optimistic to focus on stake size while neglecting other elements of players’ “choice architecture” such as speed of play or mechanism for paying.

What is this "remote access" meant to be? Is it merely because they are FIXED odds machines and if RANDOMLY there has been losses so the FIXED odds DICTATE that there has to be a winner soon in that time period? It's not like horse racing where it's possible to back a loser 100% of the time no matter how many times you bet.

Is there an actual fixed pattern to how they play out or was it merely a study to examine the POTENTIAL patterns?

Non-payout machines are NOT placed side-by-side with FOBTs. Young people are not even allowed into the premises with FOBTs.