Gaming content company, Prime Table Games, has launched a national press campaign to abolish the use of Fixed Odd Betting Terminals in UK high street bookmakers.

The campaign, which invites people to sign an online petition or download letters to government officials, objects to the Terminals as it believes that they offer unfair odds for players and exploit vulnerable sections of the community.

The Terminals are offered to the customers of bookmakers nationwide - loaded with games such as Roulette, Three Card Poker and Black Jack, and according to Prime Table Games, when compared to the actual casino games they seek to replicate - they offer incredibly unfair odds.

Prime Table Games’ Derek Webb, the man who actually invented the game Three Card Poker, says of the machines: “Gambling should be fun, open and fair - but these Terminals offer players little hope. The theoretical amount per bet that players lose on many bets is higher, and the actual percentage of player cash-ins that players lose is higher.

“In addition, the probability that players will lose all their available cash on a session is much higher.”

However, it’s not just for this reason that Webb would like the machines abolished - he also believes that the Terminals are dangerously accessible to those vulnerable to gambling and those with gambling problems, he continues:

“The Terminals exploit players in many ways, for example there is often no easily accessible ‘cash out’ button allowing players to quit and often the bet minimums and maximums are too high - with even gambling machines in Nevada having lower bet minimums.”

Prime Table Games claims that the regulators and government should be put under pressure to address these unfair machines - citing the industry’s own code of conduct, the Gambling Act 2005, which requires that gambling should be “fair and open and socially responsible”.

Concludes Webb:

“The UK Gambling Commission admits that these machines are “particularly attractive to those at risk of problem gambling and those with a gambling problem”. The primary purpose of gambling regulation should be player protection, not the protection of gambling operators or the protection of government revenue from gambling.

“We want the regulators and the government to do their duty and effect the removal of these Terminals.”

People wishing to sign up to Prime Table Games’ online petition or download a letter to send to the Government can do so by visiting its website at www.fairandopengambling.net (E-06.10.08)

PROBLEM GAMBLING ON TERMINALS By Prime Table Games 2008 can be accessed at
fairandopengambling.net/documents/ptg_problemhighstake.pdf

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