https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/young-gambling-addict-jack-ritchie-was-failed-on-all-sides-coroner-rules-fj2bvl722
What are your thoughts on this? I feel the UKGC are failing us here, like other countries the UK have their own licence and keep thinking these restrictions will help and most casinos, like us, try to do all they say. But the UKGC charge so much in taxes and fines, why aren't they investing this money to train nurses or Dr's.... I bet the UKGC fail to tell players how much profit they make from “problem gamblers”.
The UKGC are clueless. One of their most stupid changes they made was removing the sound from a win if it is 1x or less. Can anyone explain what that did to aid someone to gamble sensibly?
If they input a £2 maximum spin stake it again does not do anything because it does not matter what stake you are spinning, what matters is the total amount you spend. An affordability check should make no relevance to how much you spin per stake but only to how much you can deposit within a certain timeframe. It does not matter whether you are spinning 20p or £2 or £10. If you deposit £500 and that is the most you can deposit at the casino and you do 50 x £10 spins or 1000 x 50p spins - it doesn't matter!!! Add to that you can go roulette still and put £500. Add to that you can be signed up at multiple casinos so you can deposit over £500 anyway. Their entire way of thinking is dumb. Bet no-one on their board that makes decisions has experience of gambling. They listen to all the problem gamblers that can't take responsibility for their actions, seek to blame anyone but themselves and are bitter towards the casinos because they lost.
For so long I have been considering to write a letter to the UKGC to point all this out. Maybe it should be done and signed by members here to give it some weight in the number of people.
my son spends a lot more money gambling on some bs FIFA cards than I spend on gambling, you can still do £10-£20 bet but you need to do SOW, not sure how casinos they going to deal with it, making different slots for high bet players with open bet on £10-£20 and same slots for low bet players under £2
another side MP`s asking for £100 pm limits
soon most casinos will pull out of UKGC and we all go to crypto casinos, and UK will lose 3b tax income from gambling
Weemonk23 - 23/05/2022 at 08:17
The UKGC are clueless. One of their most stupid changes they made was removing the sound from a win if it is 1x or less. Can anyone explain what that did to aid someone to gamble sensibly?
If they input a £2 maximum spin stake it again does not do anything because it does not matter what stake you are spinning, what matters is the total amount you spend. An affordability check should make no relevance to how much you spin per stake but only to how much you can deposit within a certain timeframe. It does not matter whether you are spinning 20p or £2 or £10. If you deposit £500 and that is the most you can deposit at the casino and you do 50 x £10 spins or 1000 x 50p spins - it doesn't matter!!! Add to that you can go roulette still and put £500. Add to that you can be signed up at multiple casinos so you can deposit over £500 anyway. Their entire way of thinking is dumb. Bet no-one on their board that makes decisions has experience of gambling. They listen to all the problem gamblers that can't take responsibility for their actions, seek to blame anyone but themselves and are bitter towards the casinos because they lost.
For so long I have been considering to write a letter to the UKGC to point all this out. Maybe it should be done and signed by members here to give it some weight in the number of people.
Partycasino send this website to my email
https://www.playerspanel.co.uk/
The lack of joined up thinking by the UKGC is staggering and matched only by the lack of consideration of the unintended consequences of their proposals.
One can only marvel at the stupidity of a suggestion that would drive problem gamblers to other forms of gambling where higher stakes were permitted with Roulette of course being the obvious example.
The underlying issue is that it will end up with a two tier system of either unprofitable regulated casinos or profitable unregulated ones. How in god’s name would that protect problem gamblers?
Like every job there ever was to be done - it is only worth being done if it is done properly.
Player passports regulated by the UKGC is the ONLY way to go. The costs would be considerable and paid for ultimately by gamblers however the underlying safeguards would be effective. The ISP’s would have to be penalised for allowing anyone in the UK to play on an unregulated site.
None if this is easy however if a job is worth doing it’s worth doing it properly.
I do think that deposits/stake limits etc need to be looked at, to protect those in need, but it needs to be on a person-by-person basis. They can't put us all into the same bracket and have a £2 flat limit online.
They are indeed driving people to the black market casinos and that will cost the player more hurt than if they stayed in the UK market.
I think the fact it's mainly managed by people who hate gambling, is the biggest issue right off the bat. I have a friend (cousin's partner) who works for the UKGC and she admits it is a mess. She said in their meetings they name and shame those who write to them saying they have gambling problems and have a laugh about it. But also there are some of them who are obsessed with bringing casinos out of business.
Everyone is hitting the nail on the head.
The UKGC should be disgraced and someday something will have to give. Imagine winning i don't know 5000x on a £2 and you want to somewhat highroll but yet you can't.
My nan used to spend a fortune on the bingo several times a week, that will all have to stop to comply with these rules and think about how last minute football clubs will need to find sponsors... I feel a storm coming on.
Unfortunately there is little public support behind this fight as the vast majority of people imagine the UKGC is totally worthwhile and does a good job in their interest.
The reality is that the gambling commissions in this country in whatever guise has fallen far short of anything approaching competent or useful. For far too long they were the lackeys of the gambling industry and now they have more too far the other way as Kevin has noted.
Only a root and branch reform by a truly independent and commercially minded body of people backed by a government seeking a long term and lasting solution will solve the issues. Regrettably the problems of recruitment of those persons required allied to the short sighted view of politicians is likely to ensure this never happens. The days of the UK having world leading institutions are a mere dot in the rear view mirror.
The very fact that the “solution” to the problem is so binary creates an environment where genuine progress is difficult. A strong and vibrant gaming industry is a positive thing where it is profitable, well regulated and provides consumers with surety when the take part. A good industry is created through partnership not confrontation with government.
UKGC about Black market casinos
Kind of wouldn't be a surprise if they do bring this change. I mean, the biggest scare stories you see in news articles re: problem gambling are people doing their balls online, so if it is only 'safe' for people to play a max £2 stake on terminals then why wouldn't you have to replicate that to keep people 'safe' online?
The trouble is the inconsistency and feeling that they are sort of shuffling around the furniture on the decks of the Titanic rather than taking the harder decisions to fix the holes safely and get the boat sailing safely again.
- If they are saying that the FOBT rules are the best for keeping us safe, can they also bring back to the ability to autoplay that still exists with bricks & mortar gambling :)
- Would then be interesting to see if they apply the same £2 max stake to table games that the FOBTs are faced with. If not, wouldn't there just be a strong chance that the perceived problem gamblers doing high stakes spins would just migrate to the devil's wheel instead? It does seem an odd inconsistency that I can't safely autoplay slots at 20p a spin, but have sites where if I deposited enough, I can set my laptop up to autoplay £50k per spin on roulette for 100 spins of the wheel and that's perfectly fine.
- £2 a spin can still be crazy money to some people. There was a guy at work that most people think is an alcoholic because of his haggard appearance and poor time management, but it was down to the bandits. Even on £2 limits, didn't stop him swapping from £50 mega spins to playing 4+ machines simultaneously at £2 spins every paydays and seeing him burn through crazy sums in no time at all. Online will presumably be the same, even if any given casino stops you playing above £2 a spin / autoplaying, there isn't anything to stop you spreading your money over different locations or using different devices and exploiting autoclickers. Problem gamblers gonna be problem gamblers.
As noted above, an independent affordability check and finding some way to limit total deposits as much as possible seems the best way, although I don't know how easy that would be to utilise these days. It seemed an option a few years back, even encompassing land-based games given they all had the option for some sort of loyalty card to be used on their terminals, but nowadays any problem gambler can easily trot off to one of the growing number of crypto-casinos and continue to do their balls well beyond their assumed affordability.... plus invariably some others who aren't problem gamblers as such but don't want to be reviewed officially (particularly those who do cash in hand work?) will also get tempted by the crypto world and lose all the player protections we get with UKGC approved places.
Hard to know what the right answer is with all that in mind, but invariably the powers-that-be have to be seen to do 'something' and so further change that makes things worse for the majority with an ambition to help a small minority seems like it'll land sooner rather than later :/
You have highlighted the problems that every sensible thinking person can see.
The letter from the Chief Exec of the UKGC indicating that black market casinos are less of a problem than people perceive just smacks of wishful thinking and probably disguises the frustration that they cannot tackle it as a problem and accordingly seek to downplay it.
I know that I must sound like a broken record on this point but surely it is not beyond the capabilities of our authorities to create a passport style system, even it it works poorly at first, to properly tackle these issues and seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Later versions could be upgraded and refined until they were fit for purpose.
The political will and the technological ability to nullify access to non regulated gambling sites so would be pivotal and would require legislation to criminalise these offerings in the UK to include sanctions against operators, ISP’s, marketers and affiliates and financial institutions who permitted or promoted access to unregulated sites. Those who play poker will recall the impact of the UIGEA in 2006 that effectively wiped out online poker in the USA although Pokerstars managed to get around this however there is a template and lessons for legislators must have been learned.
The underlying issue is that we have ministers like Nadine Dorries who I would not trust to butter the rolls in Greggs at the helm of our public offices and in today’s society the election of dishonest incompetent media whores like her would give us no reason to expect change for good.