Glossary

G

Gambling

Placing money on a future event where the outcome is unknown.

Gaming machines

Any machine that is designed for playing games of chance for money or prizes. Fruit machines, fixed odds betting terminals, slot machines, pusher and crane grab machines are all gaming machines. Different types of gaming machines operate in a variety of locations and have different maximum prize and bet limits.

Gaming machines in casinos and betting shops use a computer program called a Random Number Generator, which ensures that winning and losing happens in a random and unpredictable way over a long period of time (e.g. across hundreds of thousands of games). The chances of winning a prize are the same in every game.

Gaming machines in clubs, bingo halls, adult gaming venues, pubs and family entertainment centres are known as ‘*compensated*’. Compensated machines are still random and unpredictable when it comes to winning a prize, but they pay out over a shorter period of time (eg across tens of thousands of games, not hundreds of thousands of games). The chance of winning may change depending on what the machine has paid out in the past. For example, a machine may be more or less generous depending on whether it is below or above its average return to player (that is, how much it pays out).

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