It is wrong and it is tiresome. The Toronto Star is on a crusade to stop casinos from coming to Toronto. It is a crusade that leaves no pedantic unused. Star writers are not bothered by the truth. Today an op-ed article headline reads: Casino backers playing with stacked deck. The subhead adds that: Torontonians are being bombarded with one-sided and misleading information. They certainly are. And most of this misleading information is coming from the Toronto Star.
Today’s article throws about statistics like so much chaff. First we hear that those invidious slot machines are “programmed for near misses and losses disguised as wins.” That is ridiculous. Whether using an old fashioned set of rotating wheels or an electronic chip with a random number generator, you do not program a slot machine. The reason you can predict earnings from a slot machine is based solely on the law of averages.
The article goes on to tell us that because of the “perpetual intermittent(?) reinforcement” between 10 and 12 per cent of slot players are problem gamblers. The writer fails to tell us where he got this interesting statistic. Since we know that problem gamblers can be somewhere between two and three per cent of the population, we suspect that he is basing this on slot players being about 25 per cent of the population. If he is right about that, you have to agree that slot players are a heck of a big market.
One statistic the writer uses, that is attributed, is about the 2.7 per cent of gamblers in Australia who supposedly fund 80 per cent of the profits. This seems somewhat vague, especially in light of the Aussies well known penchant for what they call punting. While there are some great casinos there now, historically Aussies have loved betting on horses.
There is no point in arguing the Ersnt & Young figures supplied to the city. Forecasts of earning by new ventures are nothing more than a good guess. Nobody knows for sure what a Toronto casino might earn for the city, the province and for the operators.
To argue about the money that Ontario Lottery and Gaming provides to support systems for problem gamblers seems rather inappropriate. If Ontario’s liquor industry contributed half as much (percentage wise) to resolving the needs of problem drinkers, we would have the happiest drunks in North America.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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