Boulderdash

All this sounds eerily familiar to me and no doubt most of the people on this forum. I started playing fruits when I was ten, first 'helping' an old fella at the cricket club and then progressing to stealing money out of the till in my parents shop as a teenager (not proud of that). At uni in the early 90s I fell in with a couple of players who knew some emptiers (mainly Ace machines lining up the numbers on the reels not the fruits which some silly sod at ace forgot to tell the CPU to count as a win). I therefore financed my degree through gambling and even left with a profit, so all my associations with fruits are positive, as opposed to my associations with spread betting which thankfully are all negative having twice very quickly lost £100 on their 'freeplay' offers. But as time has gone on it became more and more obvious that I was a 'problem gambler' who should really cut it out completely - people like me cannot play the occasional tenner and walk away. 

 

My father was an alcoholic who took himself into the priory and spent 11 years dry before he died. I never really gave him enough credit for that, probably because as an atheist I was offended by the whole AA thing (and GA and NA for that matter) of claiming that you are powerless to help yourself and have to pray to a god to restore a normal way of life. This is utter claptrap of course, but if it helps someone I am not going to get in their way. So addictive, or destructive behaviour is in the genes.

 

If you haven't already Bencrest, I recommend you read 'Addiction is a choice' by Jeffrey Schaler. It's a brilliant book that takes as its theme that the cure for the 'disease' of gambling, or alcholism, is simply 'stop it'. Hence he explains lucidly why addiction is not a disease, just one of many destructive behaviours that humans enjoy. If you REALLY want to stop, you will. He explains this by use of a simple analogy - put an alcoholic's favourite drink in front of him and say 'drink that and I'll shoot you through the head'. Of course they will not take the drink, because the downside is brought sharply into focus. With drinking and gambling, where the downside is a hangover or an empty pocket you cannot really focus on the bigger picture, where your family is destroyed, you are ravaged by debt and ill health etc. 

 

If you really want to stop gambling forever you should probably not even come on here. Unfortunately, like Vec said, the country is gambling crazy because successive governments have enjoyed the massive tax windfall that he gambling act of 2007 brought them by allowing bookies and online casinos to advertise. If you watch sport on Sky every second ad is for betfair, ladbrokes or another online casino, and if you watch daytime telly it is full of bingo ads aimed squarely at the stay at home mums. It is IMPOSSIBLE to live in this country without being offered a gamble many times a day, which makes giving it up very hard indeed. 

 

Stay off the slots and the rest of it, treat yourself to some new clothes or a holiday instead!

 

Cheers

Ed

And it plays proper shite too. I had a go today and the 'super start' with 6 phones didn't even give me DOND

In the video it spins in three bells for a jackpot. That never happens on real BFM machines!

Was in the pub yesterday and a chap put over £200 into a DOND trying to force a jp which when the megastreak was finally offered was a flat £70. Not fun

I used to spend every lunchtime in arcades, not just on fruits but pinball too. No more.

Fortunately I have been burned badly both times I've tried online gambling so I have no interest as I have a negative association.

I know barcrest have decided not to make any more reeled machines to concentrate on video slots, for online and in pubs. No more vamp it up style streakers. Imagine how much it costs delivering machines to pubs, maintaining them etc when you can just put a couple of video machines in and update them over the internet.