mid-table

I presume you mean metaphorical slips, not betting slips

The data is definitely available, just not to the likes of you and me. There have been calls in the government triennial review for this data to be made available. Some of the reporting data you can get out of the system is phenomenal, have a look at this page for some of the stats available. You can break it down by game, stake, time of day, day of week, to identify the most profitable anything. I would imagine that stud poker is the muggiest in a casino. In a bookmakers I would suggest that a 5 number bet on the 49s is the muggiest. Odds are 317,813/1, payout is 124,999/1.

Agree with the other response, these days they do but I don't think that has always been the case. Inspired are the main company who supply virtual racing, and these days it is all server-based gaming using a remote RNG. Regardless of what you think about virtual racing, the new generation of graphics that went live in 2011 is unbelievably realistic. I think I'm smart enough to differentiate between reality and CGI, but the first time I saw it I actually thought I was watching a real horse race. On one of the very early FOBTs, I can't remember what company supplied but it was the type in the picture below, I was messing about on virtual racing one day. A race finished, the result came up, and then the list of runners came up for the next race. It was exactly the same race as before. I remembered the result, stuck on the maximum bet, and sure enough the same horse won at 14/1, and I picked up £500. I believe there was a database of races, and the same race was chosen twice in a row.

Thank you! That's been bugging me since I first saw it.

I was aware that some of the figures I quoted earlier in this topic were from the William Hill 2007 Annual Report, so I had a look at their 2012 annual report. A few things stuck out; This may surprise some people who think that internet betting has taken over, but shops still account for 2/3 of revenue, with online betting making up the other 1/3; The customer loss on their FOBTs was £437million (£911 x 52.18 weeks x 9,195 machines); Over 17,000 people self-excluded from William Hill during 2012, up from 11,000 in 2011. On the basis that many, many more people who have problems haven't excluded, this gives some indication as to the size of the problem; William Hill donated £821,800 to responsible gambling charities. Very noble of them, but it is actually 0.064% of the £1,276,900,000 that customers lost during the year. I'm picking on William Hill here, I just happened to choose them as they are the company I have looked at before. But bear in mind that these figures are for one company only, repeat for Ladbrokes, Coral, PaddyPower, and so on and the numbers start to look even more frightening.

The slots on FOBTs pay out approximately 90-92%, the roulette should pay out the standard 97.3%. The blackjack payout depends on who is playing it. The payout of money that goes into the machine is reckoned to be around 50%. For example, if I start with £100 and win exactly my 97.3% payout on each spin, then after 25 spins I would be left with £50.45. I would have turned over £1,835.36 in those 25 spins (£100, then £97.30, then £94.67, and so on). A really important thing to point out here relates to what you mentioned above. A fruit machine uses a pseudorandom number generator, and the 70% payout is managed by the computer in the machine, so if someone has just won the jackpot you would do better to avoid it for a while as it needs to balance out to make it's 70% payout. FOBTs use true random number generators, so if someone wins £500 on a roulette spin, the chance of winning £500 on the next roulette spin is exactly the same as before. The margin is made in the mathematical over-round of the game, not a computer deciding when to pay out and when not to.

I don't really want to get involved in the finer points of this debate, as my head hurts a little from reading it, but a couple of things I wanted to pick up on; You probably won't get people begging for money to play FOBTs, I agree with that, but a lot of crime is committed to provide funds, or recover lost funds, that go into FOBTs. Although massively under-reported, every week you will see in the court reports about Joe Bloggs defrauding his employer for £x thousand to fund his gambling addiction. I can confidently say that in the majority of these cases this is FOBT play. The alcohol comparison is a bit of a misnomer, the difference with FOBTs is the percentage of people who use them who end up displaying compulsive traits towards it. Waaaay higher than any other form of gambling, and waaaay higher than the number of alcohol users who end up with a problem. To the people talking about the only effect being financial, that is simply not true. In fact the financial problems can seem the most daunting, but are normally actually the easiest to be dealt with once someone reaches rock bottom. It's the trust, behavioural, and relationship issue which are the hardest to resolve. As I said earlier in the thread, just because alcohol isn't banned is no reason for not doing anything about FOBTs. In my view the unhappiness they bring to society outweighs the benefits. So we need to alter that ratio. I believe the best way of doing this is to limit the maximum stake to £2, so that people can still enjoy the experience, without the misery that they currently bring to a not-insignificant percentage of the people that currently use them.

I think you are taking a very narrow-minded view. I am of the belief that you take the benefits of something to society, and the negatives of it, and sum them up to see if something is worthwhile. Scaffolding benefits more to society, in terms of the safety provided to construction workers, and the buildings that we benefit from at the end, than is risked by it's existence. Extreme sports benefit more to society, in terms of jobs, wellbeing of participants, than is risked by it's existence. Like it or not, and this is a separate debate, but alcohol and tobacco bring in so much revenue, support so many jobs (in alcohol's case), coupled with the traditional element of their existence, that they have justified their place in society (I wouldn't have a problem with banning smoking tbh). I don't see that the benefits of FOBTs to society, a new invention that didn't exist 12 years ago, outweigh the negatives that they bring. If they had a 50% tax on them, or preferably if they were recategorised to something closer to the current C category (say max stake £2, max winnings £72), then I might change my mind.

I'm pretty certain of it, these days anyway. Pre Gambling Act 2005 I would not have said so. There is always the near-misses that statistically would have occurred anyway. The psychology of it makes the near-misses more memorable than the other run of the mill spins, if you did an analysis of the spins you would find that the sequencing of the reels was pretty much in line with expectation. What is done however, and Rainbow Riches is a good example, is that the jackpot symbol is bigger and is much more prominent than any of the other symbols. Regardless of my dislike of these machines, I will say this about them; they are not rigged. There are all sorts of conspiracy theories on the internet, for example it is a pseudorandom number generator not a random number generator used in roulette, or that the random number generator picks a number between 0 and 42 instead of 0 and 36, and if the number is higher than 36 you are automatically given a loser. This is all garbage, they are truly random, they are audited, the ROI would be in line with expectations. I actually think you can see the results of the audits from links hidden away on certain betting companies websites. William Hill accounts 2007. It's 6 years out of date, and internet gambling was not as widespread as it is now. In addition the full effects of the Gambling Act 2005 had yet to start, tv advertising hadn't even started. William Hill website was poor back in 2007, it was only when it was redesigned in around 2009 that they put a real investment into online gaming. Football betting has evolved much more in the last 6 years, in 2007 the both teams to score coupon, which is now the 2nd highest grossing football coupon, hadn't even been invented. So I would agree that in 2013 the sports betting profit will be higher than £26M, but equally the FOBT profit will also be higher than £201M. The BBC article on the Liverpool vote states the following; Quick bit of maths, 33,284 machines x £825 per week x 52 weeks per year = annual industry profit of £1,427,883,600. That's £1.4 billion of customer losses, not turnover, losses.

I'm not sure if you have misappropriated one of your comments, but I have quoted the conversation above. In summary; Someone states that bookmakers profits are the result of people losing money gambling. You state that this tells you that betting patterns have changed in recent years and the industry has advanced to other methods of gambling. I don't know where you get this from. Bookmakers profits have always been the result of people losing money gambling. Changing betting patterns have no impact on this, the purpose of a bookmaker is to make money from an over-round, which will inevitably result in people losing money from gambling. Sports betting profits increase from £15M to £26M. FOBT profit increases from £0M to £201M. That does not demonstrate that the profits are increasing for all sorts of reasons. It indicates that the profits are increasing for one main reason.

If fact 1 indicates that betting patterns have changed, then how did bookmakers make a profit previously? From selling tea and coffee? The big 3 have just gone from making £10-£15M a year in 1999 to making £200-250M a year in 2012. Fact 2 is absolutely a fact, despite some of the naysayers on here. The evidence is overwhelming. I can't be arsed producing a report demonstrating the statistical proof.

I've been reading up on this, and from what I can see, Liverpool City Council don't have the power to ban FOBTs. What they have done is pass a vote to ask the government to ban them, or devolve the power to local authorities to make the decision.

Don't know where you got that assumption from, but it doesn't ring true for me anyway. Alcohol has a tax rate of around 30.9%, tobacco has a tax rate of around 80.1%. Incomparable with gambling. And also not a reason for not doing anything about compulsive gambling. The British Gambling Prevalence Survey a couple of years ago showed over 11% of FOBT users displaying compulsive gambling when using, compared with under 4% for the next highest gambling activity available on the high street. Nothing would ever get done if the prevailing attitude was 'well, there are bigger things to deal with than that. I have seen that argument many times before, doesn't mean it's still not completely ignorant.

The bookies already have the government involved. In a big way. The amount of lobbying going on behind the scenes is not to be underestimated. In 2000 betting tax changed from 9% on turnover to 15% on profits, and ever since then government (mainly labour) have worked to deregulate gambling (the Gambling Act 2005 being the watershed moment) as much as possible in order to maintain the revenue. It was the 2007 William Hill accounts. They never stated it directly, but the figure could be calculated from taking various numbers from different sections of the report (they gave the average number of machines in their estate per week in one part of the report, and the average weekly machine profit in another section of the report.) Their total profit for the year was £227M, and the calculated FOBT profit was £201M. I'm not sure about that, I would be pretty sure it would be east London, although where you draw the boundaries can be a bit grey. In any area of mass construction, as well as socially deprived areas, you are more likely to get workers who fit the demographic of FOBT players. I believe that Edinburgh bookies along the tram construction route have done fairly well in the last few years. Whilst that is true of certain fruit machines 10-20 years ago, it is not true of FOBTs. They are B3 machines, they are not allowed to use deliberate near-miss tactics. Of course, there will be genuine near misses created by chance, but to be honest they don't need to use that sort of tactic due to the turnover and grip of the machines. As for the topic itself, this is brilliant news, long overdue. There is a motion in parliament at the moment to restrict the maximum stake to £2 instead of £100. I am in favour of this, it would allow people to play the machines for entertainment, without needing to ban them completely and create the absolute social mess that exists now. William Hill have been running a despicable campaign, with a very light touch on reality, about how thousands of jobs will be lost if the maximum stake is changed to £2, and have been dishing out cards for customers to fill out which go to the local MP urging them to change nothing. This is the same Hills who pay national minimum wage, expect staff to be available at all hours in all sorts of locations, whilst making obscene amounts of money.

Yes, but the point I was making was that it's not the clubs decision to do this. If the course is set up in a non-counting way, then any qualifying competitions must be non-counting. However, if the course is set up in such a way that it is a 'measured course', the club are obliged to make any qualifying competitions counting for handicap purposes.

If it's a measured course within the CONGU framework, which includes tees not being more than 100 yards cumulatively in front of the yardage markers, and no more than 3 temporary greens, then clubs have no reason for any competitions not to count for handicapping purposes.

I thought they were poor against Hull on Sunday, but a win's a win.

You have got to be joking, that is utterly ridiculous.

Don't think that is too early, it needs to be done when there is still growth. We don't core any more, just regularly pencil tine.

Qualified for the Tassie matchplay, despite my best efforts to bogey my way in on the Championship last night. First round match this morning against a guy off scratch, I birdied 1, 5, 6, 7 and 12. I was 4 up standing on the 13th tee. Lost on the 19th.

As for me, I'm playing at Carnoustie all week in the Craw's Nest Tassie. Was meant to have a practice round this afternoon but gave it a miss as I've already played 3 rounds this weekend, know the courses very well anyway, and am hitting it quite well. Got my handicap back down to a manageable 2.9, feel that I'm playing a lot better than that (was 2 under par (6 under SSS) in a match this morning played in a gale), need to turn it into scores in the few opportunities I have left this season with a card in my hand.

I'd recommend you speak to a PGA pro. There are hundreds of sets of irons, and what is suitable for one random person on the internet is very unlikely to be the most suitable for you.

Guy wins a couple of bets putting on 6, 7 and 8-fold accumulators every day, so starts a facebook tipping service. That is brilliant.

I now know why I'm not on Facebook. I think my head would explode if I had to read shite like that every day.

Whit???? You have to be kidding? Edit; please tell me you're kidding. Edit; seriously, you are joking?