How much do you think you have gambled during your life?

I've no idea. My gambling budget is £500 per year Jan to Dec and when it's gone, it's gone and that's me done until next Jan.

Sometimes I'm up at the end of the year but will still stick to my £500 for the next year.

Redundant question if you play the spreads

I dread to think, many millions.

Impossible to say, but 415,360 markets on bf

If you could get another chance in life, would you gamble guys? I would most definitely not.

Absolutely I would, and I'd have worked harder/turned over more through the noughties.

How old are you tmm. About 60 I reckon. So that's half a million a year, or nearly £1400 a day.

You're either very well off or very bad at arithmetic.

I'm pushing 70 and have gambled nearly every day since I was a teenager, and I reckon about £1m.

you are all the off spring of mart.

you are all the off spring of mart.

you are all the off spring of mart.

you are all the off spring of mart.

you are all the off spring of mart.

you are all the off spring of mart.

you are all the off spring of mart.

sorry pc froze

sowing the seeds of love.

God knows how much, but I don't regret a single penny

ive bet 60 million in one bet.
I did a bungee jum a few years ago and thats risking your life.
A man of my charisma, intelligunce and natural attraction I must easily be worth 60 mill.

now you think you are the off spring of mart.

I may have slightly exaggerated Kenny, lol. Hard to put a specific figure on it but probably between 10 and 15 as I started young at 10. Today I have bet about 2k, with a total loss of 90 quid. Money going back and forward all day long. It`s boredom. I wish I had your discipline. Hope you are well mate.

Not sure but wouldn't think anywhere near a million.
I enjoy a bet and love a day at the horseracing followed by a night at the dogs.

Today I have bet about 2k, with a total loss of 90 quid.

Ah, so we're talking about money staked, I should have realised that.

In that case about 20 million.lol

I have to be sensible and shrewd these days as mu outgoings exceed my income by about £500

a month

Today was ok.



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2018-07-12 23:00

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2018-07-13 21:21

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Horse Racing: £150.24  Total P&L:  £150.24

Horse Racing    Showing 1 - 9 of 9 markets
Market    Start time    Settled date    Profit/loss (£)
Horse Racing / Chest 13th Jul : 2m Hcap    13-Jul-18 20:30    13-Jul-18 20:35    56.55
Horse Racing / FfosL 13th Jul : 2m4f Hcap Hrd    13-Jul-18 20:05    13-Jul-18 20:13    -11.78
Horse Racing / Ascot 13th Jul : 6f Hcap    13-Jul-18 16:35    13-Jul-18 16:37    22.29
Horse Racing / York 13th Jul : 5f Nursery    13-Jul-18 16:25    13-Jul-18 16:30    82.93
Horse Racing / York 13th Jul : 1m2f Hcap    13-Jul-18 15:50    13-Jul-18 15:55    31.40
Horse Racing / Ascot 13th Jul : 1m6f Hcap    13-Jul-18 15:25    13-Jul-18 15:28    4.95
Horse Racing / York 13th Jul : 6f Grp3    13-Jul-18 15:15    13-Jul-18 15:17    -11.78
Horse Racing / Newm 13th Jul : 1m2f Hcap    13-Jul-18 15:00    13-Jul-18 15:06    -12.54
Horse Racing / Newm 13th Jul : 6f Grp2    13-Jul-18 14:25    13-Jul-18 14:27    -11.78
Profit and Loss is shown net of commission.

Well done kenny, a profit is a profit. Yes, total stakes, not losses.

To clarify, if you put up a lay of £20 @ 10.0, imo that counts as a stake of £180?

If you counted it like that, iawn, then I'd be in billions because I used to lay books on here.

slight exaggeration, but many millions.

I think you have to count it like that because that's the amount you stand to lose.

If you bet £50 on a 1/5 shot, you wouldn't count it as £10.

A grotesque amount! Paid out a massive sum in commission and premium charges in the process.

As a rough guide and if my sums are correct, someone on here for 10 years on a 4% commission rate (17,000 points), would have won/lost total of £3,315,000 over that time.

No idea how you work it out but can you do 2% for roughly 15 years?

I'll give it a go. It's 10 pence for every point, 150,000 points needed for 2%, weekly decay 15% or 22,500 points, which is £2,250 commission paid or generated every week, at 2% multiply by 50 to get total won/lost = £112,500 per week X 50 = £5,625,000, X 15 = £84,375,000!

Correct Nick. If you lay a horse @ 10/1 for 100 then you are staking 100 which is your liability.

Cheers, that is possibly a minimum figure as you can obviously go over the minimum number of points for 2 percent. Interesting, ta.

Jul 13, 2018 -- 6:55PM, themightymac wrote:

If you could get another chance in life, would you gamble guys? I would most definitely not.

Yes, no question. Of all the things I've done in my lifetime, been here there and everywhere in my time but no doubt some of my greatest memories has been to do with all sorts of sports, mainly horse racing, greyhounds, cricket, rugby etc and it has always involved punting. Walking my Dads greyhounds aged 5 in Keston. I don't want flashy cars, bling etc, give me a day at Plumpton on a Monday afternoon and I'm a happy bunny,horse racing is my passion and I love the sport, it's a very part of me and always will be. Sandown on the 26th is my next day out on course. My username is a greyhound, 1990 Derby winner and I'll have that night in my brainbox forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfrNW2zylXk

Its in our blood if we watch any sport the odds would be though about

Greyhounds wasn`t my thing but I remember most Derby winners, especially Slippy Blue, he was a great specimen. There is not a great deal on internet about him though. Thanks for the link. Were you always confident he would win during the race?

Same as Slip started the Dog Trip aged 14 , I have always loved NH racing for as long as i can remember , Lord knows where I would have ended up without those interests , Probably Rich tbh

When he got that break from the heavens themightymac it was game over, I shouted myself hoarse standing opposite the Tony Morris pitch that night! Not my biggest win but my happiest memory.

Good stuff slippyblue. It must have been some night.

I had Bet Slippy at 25s Before the Qtrs Had a pony on .Im sure Slip had a few quidmore than That , When he turned where he was the Race was over  I had wanted to Bet Druids Johno at 16s  to win a few quid But I let it go another round and it was not 16s any more ,Just thought if any dog could beat Jonho it was Blue ,Myself and Slippy must have been standing within 50 yds of each other that Night To get Johno Beat and Have the winner was a Right result

Actually I was on the Cheap side so was Probably bang opposite him

Yes nanny, you must have been by Wally Harrison's joint mate

That was the Man Slippy and The Beard Without (Richard) last Seen Launching the satchel 50 foot in to the air and walking off in the Distance ,was a Lovely bloke one too many bad nights .

€400k

Great link Slippy Blue. Thanks

many many millions, really possibly billions, uncountable.
Mostly because I was a bookmaker, so many bets I took were a gamble of huge proportions, some football coupons for example would payout £1000's for a pound (and often fecking did ) There's the stakes on here, in fruit machines, bastad FOBTs (win or lose a grand in one of them and the turnover might be £30 or 40,000) , playing poker. Sometimes in betting on here I've staked 4 figures in a day to finish up more or less level.
The tens of 1000s of irish lottery bets I took would have meant huge liabilities on their own, twice a week for many years.

Is the question how mch we have gambled or how much we have lost? I be up and down, never really lost massive amounts never really won massive amounts, but i no i be laying big odds or backing short favs

kinda shocked to see the sums involved

Study, I'm shocked that someone as astute as yourself played FOBTs. Or are you referring to machines you had in your shop?

I had some bad moments, I_A_W_N, but at least stopped. And there are more trapped players than I was. I was also quite active in trying to stem their existence, which didn't do me many favours in bookmaking circles - but I am certain their demise wouldn't hurt betting shops at all.

I don't get why people play them. Is it the idea that you might just get lucky and have a big win?

Someone called in to LBC and claimed that he used to make thousands every week on the FOBTs because he was aware of when they were due to pay out. He said that he stopped a few years back because the firms had got wise to the loophole and closed it.

About £40 million for me! Scary when you put it like that!

Jul 14, 2018 -- 1:16PM, i_agree_with_nick wrote:

I don't get why people play them. Is it the idea that you might just get lucky and have a big win?Someone called in to LBC and claimed that he used to make thousands every week on the FOBTs because he was aware of when they were due to pay out. He said that he stopped a few years back because the firms had got wise to the loophole and closed it.

That caller to LBC was a liar. His claim is impossible as the machines do not generate their own percentage or their own numbers.
There probably have been people who got lucky in short bursts or won a bit in some shops and not others, but that's just luck.

The reason people play then is simply that they're addictive. Unless you are a player of FOBTs you cannot understand it. It's not as basic as thinking you might have a big win. I've seen older people who would have been 5p or 10p yankee punters, whanging their pension money, in notes, into them. You'll see people talk to them and get absorbed into a little bubble or world which comprises just them and the machine.

If a survey was done, or the questions about asked about whether they should exist was just given to the people who play them, I believe there would be an overwhelming call to ban them.

I was sceptical about the caller to LBC.

A couple of years earlier, someone who said he worked for one of the big firms made the point that you can't watch the FOBTs and assess when they're "due" to pay out because they're all networked in to a central computer.

It's a load of old carp, as Studyform says. I'm an off-course bookmaker and it's a random number sent down the internet to the machines in the shops and overrides with a random number generated by the computer in the Fobt if there is ever any connection issues. They have never been anything else and you could hardly call them 'Fixed Odds Betting Terminals' if they weren't!

If you include any bookmaker betting turnover my £40m figure could probably be doubled.

Gamblers are like alcoholics, "I could pack it in tomorrow if I wanted, but I don`t want to". Load of bollocks. Gambling is more addictive than crack cocaine.

It sure is and i cant watch sport now for the love of it, even today watching the final wanted croatia to win but cudnt just heer them on so had to have a we lay of france and even before that the tennis on had a we punt on anderson winning a set

Yes. That's why they call crack cocaine the FOBT of drugs.

it's a random number sent down the internet to the machines in the shops and overrides with a random number generated by the computer in the Fobt if there is ever any connection issues. They have never been anything else and you could hardly call them 'Fixed Odds Betting Terminals' if they weren't!

Disclaimer, I have no proof of this apart from my own experience.

Guessing about 6 years ago, one of the high street chains had machines, where if the start button was pressed on 2 machines at the same time,
then both machines would return the same number.

I observed this a few times, and then confirmed it by operating 2 machines myself.

I deduced after a bit of experimentation that the number changed every second and I tried to explore the possibility of it being
totally time derived but soon realised that if I couldn't get a machine to reverse engineer the code, I wasn't going nowhere.

The machines changed ( to a non time based number ) a few months later anyway.

On the same lines, in the early days of Full Tilt poker, some clever guy managed to work out that their 'random' number generator was
merely the clock down to millisecond.

Ive been backing on Rugby League games since I was 18 im 64 now,  in my prime with loads of coupons to go round and shops to get money on I wouldn't like to think but it must be well over a million, nowadays the odds don't come out until sunday morning ( the championship )  and the games start at 3  , its impossible to get a wedge on, even Betfair ( the man - who did the odds and put the dosh up has turned it in  )however this last weekend from Super League , the NRL, The Championship ive turned over 6k in losses and wins.

That is a very interesting post. I don`t bet machines myself but I am going to try that tomorrow and shall report back with outcome.

Reverse engineering WOW! Can you not just buy a machine? You didn`t work in Area 51 by any chance?

RLKP - I used to win lots on Super League for years, then the past couple of years I found it totally unpredictable and have stopped betting on it altogether now. What is your experience the past couple of years?

Escapee.
The FOBTs did have about one or maybe 2 numbers generated  a second and on all games any press at the same time generated the same result.
The result though is always generated instantly, what you see is a sort of cartoon image of it which takes about 10 seconds.
A bit later, maybe 8 or 9 years ago the random numbers were generated much more quickly, in the billions per second, making the simultaneous press impossible. This was around the same time that all the slot games were developed.
Not that it mattered because even if several machines at once came up with the same result, it didn't help to pick any winners as all bets are on before the button is pressed anyway. Which if you think about it, should be all the reason we need to never touch them.

When these machines were first invented, I was chatting to one of the software developers and he explained how the ones he was selling into Badblokes were indeed run by random number generator, but despite the numbers potentially generated being 1-37 (37 being zero) they could add a few more, so maybe 1-41 or 1-42 and all the numbers above 37 were completely for the house, and if say 40 was generated, the cartoon would just  show a number on which there were no chips.

As for Poker, I know Ultimate bet were done for this, it used to be available to watch on YouTube, but all the poker providers need to have is a single person on a given table, or in a given competition, able to see ALL the cards. Not hard to program.

Mac tomorrow after 20 mins on a fobt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PD3baegvO0

These guys actually think they can win on these machines, that is the sad bit. They eat up money like a Tasmanian Devil eats his lunch.

It's purely an addiction, themightymac.
The machines get into people's brains. Any semblance of reason and intelligence is lost.

The thing the biggest bookies don't get - because they're run by ex-students and accountants and not anyone who understands gambling - is that if the machines weren't there, the money would come back over the counter. And, the expense (rent/tax) of the machines would be negated.

It's all window dressing. The hi-lo game it doesn't matter what you hit its been predetermined.

It`s always been like that with the fruit machines in the Clubs, they are programmed to beat you.

I don`t know if the FOBTs are similar as I have no knowledge of them. Perhaps study or casemoney who worked in bookies can advise or perhaps they left before the arrival of FOBTS?

guy who turns chair over to smash fobts

likes how he casually puts his finger up to tell guy on other machine he's going to take revenge

The fruit machines in the bookies have quite a high payout although this can be altered.
Different in the service areas on the motorways where its in the 60s.

Basic, old fashioned fruit machines have dip switches which can make the percentage pay out anywhere from 70% to 98%
They were usually set at 78% for pubs and bookies when they were first allowed.
The ones to be avoided are those in high street arcades and motorway service stations, because they have an overall percentage for the "casino" of about 70-80% and then a setting of 70-98% of that!

I was one of the very first bookies to take FOBTs, this was before there was Roulette on them and only about 5 games and tax was paid on turnover. At that time I kept a fruit machine in the shop at the same time. FOBTs took ages to get any interest and it was the roulette that sparked it and gathered the addiction.

Oh I meant to say, there is no percentage setting on FOBTs. It's a nominal or expected %age payout which is different for each game but usually between 90 and 95%
Despite all the claims of independent testing (done in Holland) and guarantees about their straightness, I honestly believe the machines in the Bigger shops have more of an edge than is claimed. This isn't necessarily so for independents with FOBTs (not that there are many left), but it's impossible to prove.

Am I right is saying they have to show the %age on the fruit machines?
Was my brother in law who pointed it out to me in one of the multiples.

Yes, and it is displayed on each game, usually by pressing the 'help' or 'rules' button. It's on permanent display on the front of old slot machines.
It's supposed to be based on £10,000 turnover and is approximate and there is no way of establishing or proving it.

Another serious gambling addiction is on Scratch Cards. One sees wimin spend £20 on scratchcards and a fiver on the messages. They are always buying them. Sad thing is, they don`t realise that if the winning ticket isn`t in the shop, it`s impossible for them to win. I tried telling them that if they went on the National Lottery website, it tells them how many Jackpot tickets have been won and how many are still in circulation. Knowing this, gives one a slight edge knowing what type of ticket to buy. They don`t listen, bit Like speaking Spanish to a Lithuanian.

themightymac - like all sports its about how you rate players , finding out whose injured ( the real key ) and hope you don't get beat by a high kick to the corner in the last min ! Nowadays nearly 60 % of tries seem to come off kicks on the 6th tackle and the game has changed big time over the last 20 years, it now can be like aeriel ping pong at times however its still far easier to judge than Rugby Yawnion where the greatest player can only touch the ball twice in 80 mins and if the goalkicker has an off day youre cream crackered...

I was on the Victoria Derbyshire show a few years ago, discussing the evils of the machines (the only bookie to do so, I believe - not that it ever got me anywhere) and there was an MP arguing against me. Funnily enough, he mentioned scratchcards, I agreed they're bad, but pointed out that they don't often sponk £1000 in half an hour.
Some welsh bloke, Labour, can't remember his name, talking about freedom of choice and why FOBTs shouldn't be banned, I don't think he fully understood the argument.

12% of lottery and scratchcard spend is tax. Then there is profit for seller, for Camelot, "good causes", other costs and expenses. Not much is left to pay the winners, I can't remember the exact amount but it is a long way under 50% return for money over any long amount of time.
Worst bet there is. Football pools used to be terrible too. About 25% paid back out in many pools.

Jul 16, 2018 -- 10:20PM, STUDYFORM wrote:

It's purely an addiction, themightymac.The machines get into people's brains. Any semblance of reason and intelligence is lost.The thing the biggest bookies don't get - because they're run by ex-students and accountants and not anyone who understands gambling - is that if the machines weren't there, the money would come back over the counter. And, the expense (rent/tax) of the machines would be negated.

"The thing the biggest bookies don't get - because they're run by ex-students and accountants and not anyone who understands gambling - is that if the machines weren't there, the money would come back over the counter."

Well STUDYFORM, I really cannot agree with that statement. As you well know, the high street firms simply won't take a bet from anyone remotely clued up and the generation of say 20-30 year olds really have little or no interest in horse racing apart from the Grand National and the Derby. If I take a sample of my own nephews and mates sons etc then absolutely none of them bet on horses, it's football first by a distance and then the fobt's, the rest nowhere.

Silly question to ask on this forum where an arb would involve betting as much as possible with other bookies, risk free.

Slippy, that's because they've spent 10 years or more steering people towards FOBTs and small sports bets.
Until they came along (and before the internet betting took off), bookies did OK from betting - mostly on horses, and a little on dogs.

The biggest companies became bigger and run like most big organisations by people with qualifications rather than people with experience.
Hence my belief. Also Hence their not taking risks. That and the fact that computers limit online bets and smaller firms have all but been squeezed out of existence.

It was pretty much over by the time you joined the forum STUDYFORM.
Previous to that, the bookies tested their opinion against the exchange market, and found that they could not win.

I'd agree with that if it was just about horse racing, but it isn't, ub.
Originally bookies -especially in shops didn't take a view, they would just hedge large liabilities and stand favourites, so there would be no need to test their opinion against anything.
And the traditional punters that haven't yet died out wouldn't be converted to exchange betting as most of the can't understand how it works. Only a small percentage of punters started using exchanges. It's a combination of things that have consigned small betting shops to history.

FOBT's didn't really start being popular and the perceived cash cows (imo they've just taken the same money by a different route) until about 15 years ago.
Then the combined power of those, the increase in Horse racing "rights" (thanks to the amazing greed of Peter Savile) and then SIS costs, the inception of the Gambling Commission in 2005, the split from SIS to Turf TV and local council "licence fees" to betting shops.

All this can be added to what I already wrote.
The exchanges just were one part of the whole bunch of issues. Small businesses (independents), went the way of grocers shops, local pubs, post offices, bank branches and others.

Oh, and arbing never worked for any appreciable amounts of money.
Bookies aren't that stupid that they guarantee money to people who look for mistakes.
In the early days of BF, there were a few, but these were hoovered up in minutes and closed.

imo arbing is just bottom feeding.