Signs of slot machine addiction

When gambling on a slot machine, the bond between the gambler and the machine becomes personal, no one to interfere with their gambling and no one to compete against. The player feels a fondness for a particular machine and some players even get irritated if they see someone else playing their machine. If the slot player is playing longer than he planned, spending more money than he can afford, and telling lies about how much he wins or loses, perhaps he has a problem. If s/he is concerned about his behavior while gambling and even during periods when the person is away from the casino, perhaps s/he may have a slot machine addiction. Other signs of slot machine addiction include:

1. Belief that you are not gambling with “real money”.

Regardless of the machine—slots, video poker—casinos’ ultimate goal is to maximize players’ “time on device.” This is crucial for casinos, because given enough time, the house always wins. Christine’s Story. When I was asked to share my story, I didn’t hesitate. I think it’s so important for people to see that everyday, regular people can have a gambling addiction. And by telling my story I hope I can help others and reduce the shame of compulsive gambling. I still hated gambling, but poker felt different. My friend was a slot machine player, where the odds are controlled by the casino. With poker it was different, the casinos took a small piece of every pot (rake), but by knowing the odds of each hand combination and future cards, you could gain an edge on the people you were playing against.

1. Share She may not look like it, but Laurie Brown is a poker machine addict. Professor Brown, a successful University of Canberra academic, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the pokies, exploding the myth that gambling-related harm only affected those in lower socio-economic brackets. 'I could be glued to the machine for six hours at a time.
2. Read personal stories from people who have overcome or are dealing with the impact of harm from gambling. Now I have $100k to my name at 25, having quit the machines and living frugally to make up for it. I have been a gambling addict and I would like to share my story. I am 24 years old and sadly I have lost over $100,000 to.

2. Belief that you will win back money that you lost on a slot machine.

3. Developing a personal relationship or bond with a particular slot machine.

4. Feeling irritation when you see someone else playing on “your” slot machine.

5. Playing a slot machine longer than planned.

6. Spending more money on a slot machine than you can afford.

7. Lying about how much you win or lose on a slot machine.

8. Thinking about playing the slots when you are away from a casino.

9. Problems at work, home or in a social setting due to playing the slots.

10. If you think you may have a gambling problem, you probaby do.

Slot machines are designed to be addictive

Slot machines are also known as VLTs (video lottery terminals) or pokies. The machines are designed with three or more reels that spin when a button is pushed or a handle pulled. The machines have different themes containing graphics and music from popular movies or TV show. The sounds, colors, and images on slot machines have been designed by psychologists to seduce the player and the music reinforces the addictive behavior.

Dopamine, adrenaline and slot machines

The rapid response from the machine has a hypnotic effect and stirs up the dopamine in our brains. And the speed of slot machine games keeps the gamblers’ adrenaline pumping. Even if the gambler does not win, the machine makes him feel that he almost did. And for the gambler that can be just as great a feeling as winning the jackpot. In fact, the person can sit there for hours just pushing buttons and zoning out because the games require no thought or skill. Many slot players have commented, “I just couldn’t get up and walk away.”

Instant gratification on slot machines

When a person gambles on slot machines they don’t have to think or plan their next move. They don’t have to wait for cards to be dealt, horses to run around a track, or the end of a sports event, to know the score. Playing the slot machines person knows instantly if he won. Even if he didn’t win, the reels show him how close he came to winning. The machine tells the player that it is ready to pay off because the images on the reels were showing us three, four or five of a kind.

Slot machines are the crack cocaine of gambling

Slot machines are powerful revenue-generating forces designed to keep the player spending more money. The innocence of the slot machine attracts the gambler as he walks through the casino but the slot machine addiction has been described as the crack cocaine of gambling. The money that people gamble on slot machines typically isn’t important and is treated like Monopoly money. Even when the person loses, they believe they will win back all the money they lost to the machine. To compound the losing of money, several ATM machines are located in the gambling area. But what has your experience been? Are you having trouble with slot machine use? Please share your thoughts below, and we will respond to you personally!

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.

Poker Machine Addiction Stories

Tricking the brain

Poker Machine Addiction Stories Youtube

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.

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.

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 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.

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