Casino poker doesn’t always involve a dealer and a funny hat accessorized with shades. Some casino poker games don’t even require a carbon based opponent. A player can just pull a chair up to one of the many machines at a brick and mortar gaming establishment and play poker for money against the computer. The problem when you play poker for money against one of these video poker games is that quite often you lose your money. This is because, unlike live casino poker or online poker, the video poker games are hard wired to pay off 48% of the time or less. Obviously this means that the long term projections for playing video poker games is an inevitable loss of cash. With that said, people play these machines in the hopes of catching lightning in a bottle. The draw of the big score is the carrot that keeps people coming back to play poker for money in a situation that guarantees long term failure. These people rarely acknowledge the stick of extreme debt they can be beaten senseless with by making video poker games a regular part of their lives. Well, going broke playing video casino poker may be a thing of the past. In Australia, the new government is eyeing a way that gamblers can keep themselves in check at the casino when they play video poker games.
By 2014, a new technology could put a ceiling on how somebody can lose when they play poker for money at a machine. They will be able to enter into the casinos system a top amount they can afford to lose for the day or the week, and when they play at the casino poker machines, they are done once they have lost the amount they entered into the system. This allows somebody to establish a budget when they are still thinking rationally, and not get sucked into a betting fervor while in the heat of battle. While the gaming industry has a lot of problems with this initiative, this is something that (if implemented) will go beyond those who play poker for money in a live casino and eventually cross over into the online poker industry.
Let’s be honest. Online poker, like any other gaming pursuit, derives a large percentage of its profits from those who are addicted to gaming. While the odds of success are better playing online poker than they are at a video poker machine (mostly because poker is a game of skill, not chance), there are a lot of very bad players out there pumping a lot of cash into their favorite online poker sites. Technology that limits a player’s losses would change the industry dramatically, and put a deep dent into the profits of internet gaming companies.
The casinos fight this at their own peril. It is a no win situation for them. If they accept it, and let it become law in many places they lose a ton of money. If they fight it, they look like soulless profiteers who want to profit from somebody’s addiction. The bad PR will also cause them to lose money. This is something they are going to have to figure out sooner than later.
