In my lifetime I’ve spent just barely over ten cents/year on pokies.
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You old fart
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I used to work at a pokies venue and it definitely informs my stance against them. The stories you mention aren’t rare unfortunately. A regular where I worked owned a block of land with her husband and she was building a house on it, without his knowledge, in order to sell it to fund her habit. Absolutely lovely person who fell into the trap and couldn’t get out.
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Beyond the measures such as those proposed by NSW to limit amounts that individuals can spend I would like to see regulation of the overall design of the pokies , the lighting, sounds etc .
They isolate the players to a one on one relationship, put them in an alternative universe where time is suspended and shut out everything else.
The worst ones include buttons to call for drinks and food to be delivered to them at the machine
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With respect BigA, many of us who enjoy playing the pokies like the lights, sounds and the excitment it generates. I also like at times being able to push a button and a new drink appears. It is called entertainment.
Now I do not have a gambling problem, know my limits and I am never chasing the next win, but most pokies people are like me.
And some of us play Pokies to get away from the World, others drink, take drugs, play video games or post on BBlitz.
Huh? The whole point of money laundering is to get a cheque that comes from a legitimate source?
You dont even need to gamble that much(or at all)
Just feed your 10k in dirty money into a machine and press collect to get your cheque .
Pokies couldnt be more easier if they tried.
Here they are trying to get rid of machines that allow up to 10k deposits.(they do that because it a poker machine goes over its more AML paperwork).
You have people with thousands sitting at clubs feeding money into multiple machines.
The only way to stop these guys is cashless cards(or remove the pokies).
But clubs dont want to remove cash outright as it would affect the people who use them to drop their dough into them but get little to nothing back through actual gambling.
Ie the suckers which make them billions as an industry
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From my own experience I can appreciate the pleasure of a flutter and the temporary relief from anxiety and concerns in a life.
I suppose my concerns with design and the assault on the senses are that they are adverse to tempering addictions and in fact are designed to worsen them by getting them into a zone where everything else is blocked out, in particular the consequences of draining the purse, going into debt and total irresponsibility
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Also, no one went to norfs ‘kanga kasino’, so it was no surprise it was shut down.
Posting on blitz cost me my house and marriage.
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which one?
all you losers need to find you someone that loves you as much as bacchusfox loves pokies.
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Won’t ever happen - the point of the Skinner box is to reinforce the reward when it comes, neutering their psychological reinforcement will harm revenue.
In the same vein, the constant talk of a move to cashless pokies isn’t even close to a solution to the problem. Cashless cards just give machine operators more data in which to track users, refine processes and improve their systems to generate more revenue.
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If that is entertainment, just you wait until you see these things called vending machines. You’ll have the time of your life. 
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You should go try win that money back!
Blitz saved my marriage because I don’t talk to my wife and therefore no arguing!
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posting on blitz won me mendoza’s house and wife
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It’s me again folks. I started this thread because I wanted to express my opposition to Essendon FC having 190 Pokies licences. I have really appreciated the comments from supporters (both for and against).
I wanted to post a response to a (very reasonable) point that was made to the effect that you shouldn’t remove a source of revenue until another replacement source of revenue is found.
I have had a look at the Essendon FC Annual Report (page 21) and noticed that our total revenue is up from $48,348,825 in 2021 to $66,272,300 in 2022. I will leave the interpretation of this data to the bean counters out there, but I guess the point I wanted to make is - how much revenue is enough? In my experience, you never get “enough” revenue, you always want just a little bit more. I don’t think that the sky will fall in if Essendon decides to get rid of its pokies licences (I am assuming that they will sell the licences for a profit, but wouldn’t it be great if the Government could be convinced to buy them back - has anyone raised this with our former President Lindsay Tanner?)
cash is worth less this year than it was last year.
And that’s always true.
Selling the pokie licences for cash is easy, but pokie licences aren’t just an asset, the represent a very high-efficiency income stream. You need to replace them with other income streams, and there’s very few other investments out there that offer the same sort of return and lack of risk, because very few other investments are built on people addicted to literally giving you their money to the point that they’ll ruin their own lives to do so.
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Maybe politics not so relevant to footy clubs, but their attitudes could reflect the low level of success in reforms in the wider world.
Andrew Wilkie has never forgiven Julia Gillard for backtracking on pokies or gambling reform.
Maybe she was later held hostage to Sussex Street for the donations to ALP from pokies revenue.
Then, the Crown and Packer donations to both sides…