Australian anti-gambling campaigners claimed that players at Crown Casino who have previously become members of a system set to limit their losses are being allowed to take advantage of unrestricted features on pokies which ridiculed the measure aimed at minimisation of gambling-related harm.
Supporters of the casino have urged the Victorian Government to especially allow Crown Casino to operate poker machines without setting a minimum spin rate. For the time being, the state has imposed a minimum spin rate of 2.14 seconds between bets on all other pokies there. To make things worse, Crown Casino also offers pokies without any bet limits. For the time being, the rest of the poker machines offered in the state of Victoria have a maximum bet of AU$5 allowed.
Back in 2015, the Victorian Government rolled out the YourPlay state-wide system, which provides players with the chance to set certain limits on their expenditures and monitor their spending on local poker machines. The introduction of the YourPlay system has been part of the state’s efforts to reduce gambling addiction rates. The program was criticised at the time when it was rolled out because it did not stop players from making more bets once they reached a spending limit.
Only players who had a YourPlay account, which could be accessed through the loyalty program of the Crown Casino, are able to access the exemption play functions. However, the casino has been criticised for the fact that it is allowed to operate up to 1,000 unrestricted machines for players with YourPlay accounts, but the option for setting a maximum spending limit is not widely promoted.
Crown Faces Another Allegation on Gambling Laws Violation
According to media reports, one of the Crown Casino former employees who has a YourPlay account has accidentally understood that he was actually able to play poker machines unrestricted, despite the exclusion. The player also revealed that he asked the Crown Casino to set up an AU$1,000 as a week limit at the time he joined the YourPlay program. However, the casino staff tried to persuade him not to choose such a limit and offered to raise it to AU$400,000.
The latest information revealed in terms of the irresponsible behaviour of the Crown Casino follows the allegation that the casino’s employees provided players with special plastic picks in order to jam the poker machine buttons and allow continuous play.
As previously reported by Casino Guardian, this has not been the only violation of the Australian gambling operator. Earlier in 2018, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR) imposed a monetary fine amounting to AU$300,000 on Crown Casino Melbourne after the operator was proven to have tampered with some of the poker machines offered there.
As far as the latest revelations of the casino’s irresponsible behaviour are concerned, experts and gambling researchers have scolded the operator for that. After all, spin limits have been there to make sure that people would be provided with some time to consider whether they would like to change their bet or not. A local gambling researcher, Charles Livingstone from the Monash University’s school of public health described poker machines without a spin limit as the most dangerous form of pokies available.
The latest allegations against the gambling operator made the Australian Greens party call for an urgent removal of Crown’s exemption. Marlene Kairouz, the Minister for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, revealed that the Labour Government had already taken measures to tackle gambling-related harm and warned that practices that undermine these efforts would be put under strict monitoring.
- Author
Olivia Cole
