Fruit Machine Chat

I have been informed that in order to apply a self ban, each individual casino must be visited personally so that a photo can be taken and the self ban can be activated.

It seems wrong to me that each casino must be visited rather than just one casino in each of the chains. All casinos I have frequented promote controlled gambling and have an abundance of paraphernalia proclaiming such. If casinos really want to appear to help people stay in control, how can they make people who wish to take the rather extreme step of self exclusion, visit each and every casino in order to be banned.

If someone brings an abundance of pound coins to a casino they can be barred for life under the suspicion of money laundering (I have known this happen for as little as £1200). With this ban, they are not only excluded from the casino where the alleged offence took place, but also disallowed entry to other casinos in the chain. One would imagine that if a more serious transgression took place, the information may even be passed to other casino chains.

If it is possible to pass information so freely between venues, then why can the seemingly caring casinos make an individual go to such lengths to exclude themselves.

Excluding oneself from casinos in the local vicinity is not difficult. However, when an individual is in a certain state of mind and feels the burning desire to gamble, they will simply drive to the nearest casino they are not barred from.

Perhaps I have misunderstood and there is a simple way to self exclude from all UK casinos, I would be interested to know if this is the case. At the moment it seems that the quickest, maybe most profitable, and certainly most fun way, would be to get barred on purpose, but this may cause other repercussions and would possibly carry a life time ban. Does anyone have any thoughts on this and has anyone here actually self excluded successfully from all UK casinos.

If you want to get banned from every casino just go to each one and do top-hatting for as long as you can get away with it and all they can do is ban you. Simple as that. Go to a Grovesnor, Gala - that's 2 big companies out of the way, then you probably get barred from all London Club ones thanks to them too. Can't really not gamble to be honest, go to somewhere like Empire you'll always get in... just will have trouble cashing out large amounts.

do something bad

smash up a roulette console?

surely a self ban is different to actually getting banned personally?

do something to get them to kick you out, and they'll tell all their other chains to ban you too, they already have your photo from your id.. and theoreticly they already know your name and address etc???

hollow out the sole of your shoe enough to contain a small battery box from a child's toy and run a wire up your leg with a button on the end and maybe if you're feeling adventurous connect up to an old alpha numeric display and any old circuit board.

walk over to a roulette table and brashly ask what the house limits are before proceeding to spend a while blatantly calibrating your device with the button ,circuitry and alpha in plain sight and loudly remarking on the wonders of modern technology.

as soon as you spot security you must endeavour to destroy your device so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands and refuse to give any kind of statement except that you was p.m.'d the system by someone on fruitchat


should get you excluded no probs.

That's basically what I said but thanks for copying me everyone.

Lugs if you're ever up for really doing that, give me a shout.

These ideas would work and were the sort I was leaning towards when I wrote 'At the moment it seems that the quickest, maybe most profitable, and certainly most fun way, would be to get barred on purpose, but this may cause other repercussions and would possibly carry a life time ban'.

It certainly would be a fun thing to do, and could be quite profitable. But what I'm trying to find out is if there is an above board way of self exclusion. It seems ludicrous to me that you can only get excluded from all UK casinos if you are accused of committing a crime, become extremely antisocial, or are prepared to visit each casino in person. It would not seem so bad to me if they did not have posters and flyers all over the casinos stating they encourage controlled gambling when clearly they do not.

Rape the casinos like they rape all gamblers I say.

Why care what's above board? Fuck em over while you can! No laws will help them, you either make the money and walk out or make the money and walk out without it, simple. Fuck all they can do.

my mate smahed up a terminal and they didnt ban him

A friend smashed a terminal once, they gave him a choice, a lifetime ban or pay £1200 for repairs and still be allowed in.

He took the ban.....


..... and still got chased for the money to repair it!

he lost so much in there it was actually -ev for them to ban him tbf. he actually never went back as he was so embarassed

Whether I like it or not, I'm barred from ALL UK casinos... my "crime"? Suspected card counting. To be fair, I'd taken a good sum of money from a particular chain over a monthly period... but never did I think they would get me barred from ALL UK properties. Oh well, I moved from the UK shortly after, so it's not an issue. Besides, there are THOUSANDS of online casinos / sportsbooks / bingo sites in which to play, and all are happy to accept play due to inability to count against a computer (although the recent launch of many live dealer casinos may present opportunities - but they seem wise to it, having the blackjack cut card way up the front).

The self-exclusion thing is a bit of a farce, and made deliberately difficult I feel. Yes, you have to visit EACH property individually. If you're doing that, take a friend with you to ensure you don't get tempted to play "one last time" before you exclude at that property. Each time you visit a casino, if you're not in control, you run the risk of losing money. You could talk to Gamcare about your experiences - they may be able to help with multi-venue exclusions, due to their relationships with casino operators / industry etc. Apart from that, the individual visits are probably your only real way to get effective barring in place... however what about each of the individual fruit machine parlours, bookies and other betting places you'll also need to be barred from? That's a lot of walking around and temptation...

When you want to ban yourself (because you're a profitable player to the casinos) it's a tricky process. When they want to ban you, only one flick of the pen is required. It's disgusting, immoral, and downright wrong - but it's the law. :-(