Crown Casino and Aristocrat sued in landmark test case
Crown Resorts and Aristocrat Leisure have been hit with a lawsuit alleging they designed a poker machine that deliberately tricks gamblers into losing.
According to a statement of claim lodged in the Federal Court yesterday, the machine called the Dolphin Treasure built by Aristocrat Leisure and operated by Crown Casino in Melbourne had a rigged design that misled or deceived people about their chances of winning.
Shonica Guy is suing Crown and Aristocrat. She started gambling when she was 17 and only kicked the habit when she was in her 30s.
She said she was shocked to discover her favourite machine had been rigged.
“I actually could not believe it – I felt really ripped off,” she told reporters yesterday.
“They (pokies) stole half of my life that I can’t get back and I was just amazed a machine could do that.”
The lawsuit seeks an injunction banning Crown from operating the Dolphin Treasure or any machine with a similar reel configuration and banning Aristocrat from supplying the machine or anything similar to Crown “or any other gaming venue within Australia”.
If successful, the test case could have ramifications for the design of all poker machines in the industry.
The allegation is that the Dolphin Treasure machine fools people about their true chances of winning due to deliberate design features in its reels and symbols.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn says the machines contain five reels covered in symbols.
In a fair machine, the symbols are evenly distributed across the reels so that each symbol comes up the same number of times on each reel. The chances of winning there is just the luck of the drawer.
But in the Dolphin, four of the reels are of equal size with 30 symbols on each reel, but the fifth reel is larger with 44 symbols, making it harder to win the big prize symbols on the last reel than on the others.
“No matter how many ‘jackpot’ symbols you get on the first four reels, the big fifth reel keeps the odds stacked in favour of the house,’’ Maurice Blackburn Principal Jacob Varghese said.
“It’s like playing a game of cards without knowing that the deck has four aces of spades, three queen of hearts and 7 tens of diamonds. It’s rigged. And the effect on players is that they see these symbols coming up constantly, but they don’t know that their real odds are determined by the reel with the lowest number of the given symbol.”
Mr Varghese said the case had massive implications for the industry.
“This is an important legal case that we hope will play a key role in improving the way the pokie machine industry operates for consumers, including potentially being applied to all machines across the industry,” Mr Varghese said.
“The claim is the first to focus on the deceptive design of pokie machines, and in doing so calling into question the behaviour of the manufacturers and the industry in allowing people to continue playing machines that have been deliberately geared to make winning far more difficult than appears to players.”
In a statement yesterday, the Gaming Technologies Association (GTA) defended the design of the slot machines.
“Australia has one of the most stringent regulatory environments for poker machines in the world. Regulators impose comprehensive conditions on every aspect of poker machine design and operation,” GTA Chief Executive Ross Ferrar said.
by Leon Gettler, October 27th 2016
