Shock Horror! Club encourages gamblers to gamble.

Saturday's Herald-Sun (and Sydney's Daily Telegraph) report on a NSW Club that is facing fines of up to $300,000 "following reports it instructed staff to encourage customers to play the pokies."

How naive can you be? Hotels and clubs are trying to make money from poker machines. This is a business. Of course it is not in line with responsible gambling obligations but does that mean they don't try and encourage gamblers to gamble and gamble more and more.

The club in question unfortunately put their 'customer service' policy
in writing which brought their undoing. The practice of not holding $2 coins is however extremely common across the industry due to the $1 tokenised nature of most Australian machines (i.e. they will only accept $1 coins or notes - coins of other denominations are not accepted.) This is also very easy to achieve and get away with for a venue as due to the high number of $1 coins on hand it is easy to bank $2 coins and only circulate $1 through the venue.

Responsible gambling means for most industry doing what you have to do as required by law not what might benefit your patrons. And of course nothing should prevent maximum revenue being achieved - keep them at the machine and keep them happy is the core business of the gambling industry.

Now there will be the probe into this club's behaviour and they may get fined, but nothing really will change. There is simply too much money to be made for all involved, except the players of course.

Gambling has winners and losers but it isn't a fair bet as we always know who wins.

GG