Why are MPs patting themselves on the back over the FOBTs crackdown? They've been played by the gambling industry

Slashing the stakes on “crack cocaine” gambling machines from £100 to £2 per spin looks like an unequivocally good news story.

Politicians have taken a principled stand against big business and helped out vulnerable people who are losing their livelihoods, their families and even their lives.

But many of the more than 100 MPs that forced Theresa May into an “embarrassing climbdown” over delaying new rules for fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) this week have nothing to be patting themselves on the back for.

They have failed the very problem gamblers they claim to speak for by jumping on the bandwagon of a debate almost entirely devoid of facts, and which has been heavily influenced by competing gambling industry interests.

Those interests, facilitated, it must be said, by a compliant media, have fed the public a simple morality tale that makes for easy journalism and plays well on social media; a battle fought on behalf of innocent gamblers by plucky politicians against greedy bookmakers.

And the good guys have won for a change. What a story!

Unfortunately things are considerably murkier than they first appear.

What most people are unaware of is that the supposed crackdown on these addictive gambling machines barely affects them at all, only one category of game.

Hundred-pound-per-spin roulette will disappear from betting shops but in its place, on the exact same machines, remain slot machine games that fleece gamblers almost as rapidly.

Some academics argue that slots games are even more addictive than electronic roulette. They are certainly lucrative, now accounting for around 40 per cent of bookies’ gambling machine revenue, and growing.

Essentially we are about to stop selling crack cocaine on the high street while offering up increasing amounts of crystal meth from the very same drug dens.

What’s the big deal you might argue? With stakes at just a couple of quid, there’s no harm. It’s pocket change; a bit of fun.

A fair point on the face of it, but consider this: at £2 a spin, the average slot machine game takes a gambler’s money at roughly the same rate as playing electronic roulette (aka an FOBT) at £50 a spin.

If this seems hard to believe at first glance, that’s the point. It’s in that gap between the fuzziness of human intuition and the cold calculus of probability that most gambling company profits are made.

These very same slot machines, complete with rapid spins, flashing lights, repetitive music and cartoon styling are also available in 1,800 gambling arcades and more than 100 casinos, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

None of those venues are impacted directly by the stakes cut because they have never been allowed electronic roulette, which is found only in bookmakers.

Coincidentally, casinos and gambling arcade firms have been amongst the most enthusiastic backers of the anti-FOBTs campaign, as is well known by those in politics who have enjoyed their hospitality.

So how exactly have we all been so easily hoodwinked?

It’s a basic case of misdirection, as any street confidence trickster playing a standard shell game will be able to attest.

To focus exclusively on the size of each stake size is deeply misleading. It is impossible to work out how much a person is likely to lose on any game without at least two other factors: how fast they can bet and how big a cut the house takes each time they do.

It would be like trying to figure out the volume of a swimming pool from the fact that it’s three feet deep at one end.

This is how it works: on electronic roulette each spin takes 20 seconds, meaning the new rules will allow a maximum bet of £6 per minute – basically useless for giving most gamblers the buzz they crave.

Slot machine games let you bet eight times as rapidly and take about three times as much of each bet as roulette.

The upshot of this is that someone betting £2 a spin on roulette will lose around a tenner an hour if they are averagely lucky. With the same size stakes on a slot machine, they will lose £230 in the same timeframe.

This begs the obvious question of why has roulette been targeted while slot machines have not?

No answer to that question makes an iota of sense if we also believe the FOBTs debate has been an objective discussion about how to minimise the harm caused by gambling.

However, it quickly comes into focus when we see it has in fact been a turf war between warring factions of the gambling industry: the bookmakers on one side, the arcades and casinos on the other.

The former had electronic roulette on the high street, that latter didn’t.

MPs who have campaigned to cut FOBTs stakes may believe that they have done right thing. But that doesn’t excuse them backing a substandard, narrowly focused policy that will not achieve its purported aims, and then turning to the gallery to take a bow.

It is a failure of our parliamentary system and our media not to have filtered out the bulls*** handed to us on a plate by certain vested interests.

Worst of all it is a failure to those people for whom MPs claim to be fighting: those who will sadly take their own lives because of their addiction.