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Gambling Behaviour Part Two – it’s still the product stupid!

Derek Webb, Founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling | Campaign for Fairer Gambling

4 min read Partner content

Derek Webb, the founder and funder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling and the Stop the FOBTs campaign, expands on his explanation of gambler and product interaction.

My last Politics Home Central Lobby articlereferenced my experiences relevant to the FOBT debate as a poker player. This article will focus on my first casino game creation experiences.

The first casino table game I created was Three Card Poker™ (TCP) in 1994, which was designed to compete with two US proprietary poker games that were first popular in the mid-1990s: Caribbean Stud and Let it Ride. All three games are poker variations that allow the players to play against the dealer or against a hand rank pay-scale rather than against other players.  

I divested all rights in TCP before starting the Stop the FOBTs campaign, and have no commercial interest in it. Worldwide internet rights are owned by SHFL, as are all other rights in all other formats outside the British Isles, whereas GLXZ own those rights in the British Isles. TCP is the most successful proprietary casino table game ever.     

TCP has a faster pace than Caribbean Stud and Let it Ride, as the player receives three cards rather than five. Whilst all three games had a three unit wager method, TCP was designed to have a greater total average wager per hand than each of the other two games. Those two games also had a $1 side bet on a long-shot payoff. So whilst the speed and total wager were faster and higher in TCP, the overall house advantage was lower and it was fairer, with more winners winning more frequently than each of the other two games. 

In Britain, TCP did not get introduced until 2002, as a change to secondary legislation was required. It had already been successful in the Isle of Man for several years, where it had dramatically outperformed casino stud (Caribbean Stud without the jackpot). Another change in Britain in 2002 was adding the progressive jackpot to casino stud.  

At Isle of Man presentations to British operators, I explained how the casino stud progressive jackpot would not suit the demographic of the British casino gambler and that it would actually result in a decline in casino stud business. Within a year or so TCP business comfortably exceeded that of casino stud, which has now almost disappeared in Britain.  

Regular gamblers are not motivated by greed so are not attracted by very high payoffs such as a £100,000 progressive jackpot. Instead they look for engagement in the activity, the opportunity to win and the perception that winning is feasible. Better informed gamblers also look for staking levels and speed levels that allow them to gamble in their comfort zone.

The strongest casino table games to engage gamblers are low house advantage games with high win frequencies and primarily 1 to 1 payoffs, such as blackjack and punto-banco (also known as baccarat). The most powerful game in Britain is roulette, where essentially players set their own win frequency based on the amount of numbers they select. Roulette is also the most dangerous game though, as players are encouraged to look at  past results as if the ball and the wheel have some kind of memory and the future can be predicted - a complete fallacy.

It is rational for gamblers to want a positive skew, being a payoff that can exceed 1 to 1 and to want a good win frequency, as is the case with TCP. With a shuffle after every round, TCP players are not subject to the same fallacy perceptions of the traditional games.

It is irrational for gamblers to look for a win frequency of 50% or higher as this results in a negative skew of payoffs of less than 1 to 1. Any roulette gambler betting 19 numbers or more (out of the 37 options) is gambling irrationally.

Enabling roulette on FOBTs in easy access betting offices, located primarily in deprived areas, attracting inexperienced young persons and ethnicities with greater vulnerability to harm from gambling, was guaranteed to be a disaster. Labour sensed something might be wrong with FOBTs in 2005 and gave the responsible minister at DCMS the power to reduce the maximum stake per spin to £2 from its current level of £100.

Since 2010, volumes of evidence clearly and convincingly show that this is practically and morally the right thing to do. Will the next government finally resolve FOBTs?

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Read the most recent article written by Derek Webb, Founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling - World Responsibility Briefing - What the FOBT was that?

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