"Hi,
This is my first post here. I found this topic when looking at information for the FOBTs. I work in a bookies. It's one of the bigger ones. Our shop is in direct competition with a much busier shop about 20 yards away. Although I can't post the exact numbers (through fear of being found out), I can post the percentages of how much we paid out compared to how much we took.
These are since April this year and are to the penny.
I don't know if they'll help you but I hate the FOBTs and wish they would be banned from every shop in the country. They ruin people's lives and attract (mostly) unwanted customers.
Again, these are the percentages of money paid out compared to how much we took (from cash and card).
1) 85.7% | 2) 97.2% | 3) 94.4% | 4) 78.8% | 5) 79.4%
6) 56.6% | 7) 81.1% |
80.5% | 9) 88.0% | 10) 84.7%11) 76.0% | 12) 59.7% | 13) 73.9% | 14) 100.9% | 15) 93%
16) 89.4% | 17) 79.6% | 1
37.6% | 19) 78.0% | 20) 73.1%Week 20 is the Sunday just gone. As you can see there is only one week this year where we made a loss (Week 14). Some weeks it looks as though we've robbed them blind without even a fair crack of the whip, but bare in mind that some customers put a *lot* of money in to the machines and keep playing until they're potless. I think this is a major factor. We have several regular customers that don't know when to walk away.
Take, for example, one customer that comes in almost daily. Just the last week he put in £20. He managed to get it to £200, hovered around that mark for around 10-15 minutes and then lost it all. He then continued to plough money in chasing it. He complained to me that the machines were fixed (like it would ever stop him from playing them anyway). Because he was a regular and I know how I can talk to him, I was quite blunt in explaining that he managed to get his winnings to 10 times what he put in and that it's up to him to learn when to walk away.
As much as I hate the machines, I also hate the customers that blame everything but their inability to realise that we are a gambling establishment, not a cash machine.
On a side note, the biggest win I have seen someone take in a few years working in several shops is £5500. I don't know how much he put in, but I have heard through the grapevine that it was around £2500."
not rigged?
another one;
"They can't possibly forecast what percentage of cash input is retained by the machines, it depends on playing style - cf previous comments about guaranteeing a 0% retention by buying in and cashing out immediately.
It would be commercially unreasonable to expect the machines to display historical stats, too. Perhaps the GC will one day publish the hold percentage (win as a percentage of cash drop) for FOBTs in bookies, it would be interesting but wouldn't prove anything.
For casinos, the national number - retention about 16% - is on the Gambling Commission website, on one of the statistical digests.
I would expect the FOBT number to be massively higher, although interestingly the number for casino roulette machines - effectively the same game, whatever you might think - is actually lower, I think around 13-14%.
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I still come back to the question that if you do understand what the 2.7% represents, there cannot be any good reason to "fix" the machines in any way to improve the take. If you don't believe the 2.7% then you're just plain wrong, way too much at stake for operators, machine suppliers and everyone else involved to lie about easily collated statistics."
