'Palatable to both sides'? What planet are you on? Do you think the bookies will find under £20 'palatable'?

Main problem i think is that they want to rip off the mugs that play them for thousands and then sh it themselves when they smell an inspired sports/horse/dog bet. This is really what should be exposed, can't have it both ways but the brown envelopes say different. And why do you keep having sly digs about your scumbag employer Ronnie Rails and then bend over backwards to sell there **** gaming machine product for them, all for 21k a year?

Not in a million years would the bookies accept a maximum spin lower than £20 as 'palatable'. If you read the impact assessment on the Government Gambling Consultation Review, KPMG assess the revenue drop to be by 27.6% on a £20 spin, I would guess max £10 a spin would see a revenue drop to around 50% and KPMG forecast a revenue drop of 64.9% with a reduction to £2 a spin. If any of the aforementioned restrictions were put in place there would be mass shop closures and the big bookies share prices would plummet! The bookies will be truly horrified if the maximum spin was reduced to below £20!

Whatever your opinion of the moral wrongs of bookmakers, I was merely pointing out that you are very wrong if you think under £20 a spin would be 'palatable' to the bookmakers!

Sadly nothing will change for the sports punter regardless of the max spin amount, anyone with any sort of clue on any sport is & will continue to be  regarded as a parasite, nothing will change that & as the average punter has less of a say than the average man in the street in North Korea all that will change if it ends up say £20 a spin will  be a few shop closures for example this time next year there may be say 14 bookies in High street North instead of 18

We had a proper old type shop busy on the phones - pubs - clubs loads of decent punters and the fobs had been out for about 6 months. I said to me old fella we need one of those he said not a chance no one will play it and it will take up too much "paper space" and we hardly had any as it was. I finally talked him into it and the machine was put in by a firm who said it def wont lose. We turned it on on the Saturday and couldnt see it from where we were behind the counter. People  started bringing up winning dockets £30 £20 £4  then £340 me old man was going spare we could here it being played and people were crowding round it as it was new. Any way someone comes up and said the machine wont accept notes and there was an error message on the screen so we phoned the fella who put it in he said the error message was because the thing that stored the notes was full up !! We opened the cabinet and the money thing was was on a spring as I grabbed it the spring came away and fk in laods of fivers tenners and twentys flew across the shop. We scooped em up over a grand had been put in and we had paid out about half that. Whatever happened results wise we always knew the "box" ( as me old man would call it ) was sitting there in the corner minding its own business making bombs.

The "cynic" in you halcyon days is you being realistic. Alas.

Brilliant story, maineroad!

£30 max casino games (roulette, blackjack etc)
£2  max spin slots (no high stakes options).

Max number of FOBT machines increased from four to six per shop.

Things are good Ronnie - hows it with you these days ?

Those chinks used to bring in thousands in scottish notes that stank of weed  I got to know the main man pretty well it seems they were Chinks running cannabis farms from terrace houses in Scotland. They had vietnamese running them up there for them they used to call up and collect the cash every couple of week then shovel it all in the fobs play a bit then collect a chitty and receive normal cash. I soon cottoned on so when they brought the chitty up I just emptied the machine and gave em back the scotch money they had just put in. I had a word with them and said as long as they play the fobs for a while I would pay them out in sterling regardless of how much scottish they put in. It pretty much went somthing like they would stick a grand in and collect 7 ton. You would then get the odd time they would win then the odd time they would blow thousands in. They asked if they put normal bets on that won could they be paid in sterling which I said was fine so they then started sticking massive money on 1/3 and 1/4 football teams thats when they started to lose a lot. A lot of the chinks smoke and the smokin ban had come in so I would put the shutters down lock the door and let them sit on the machine smokin like chimneys. They were always polite but frighting at the same time !! Happy days !!

a very interesting and at least for me informative number of postings ; i hardley go into bookies these days cept to watch a race if im in the city ,,, but it does seem a different world from my formative years

I will look forward to reading them.

I hope you lose your footy game match though!

Great story's Maine road thanks for posting

Radgers.. no dough from you yet ?...   

No ''nifty'' takers !!!     

£2 is what nearly everyone wanted but IMO £2 is still £2 to much.

oi, you never answered ya fred!

The government are making a right pigs ear of this , this review should have been concluded ages ago .

hope your job is safe Ronnie.

don't give up the day job halc