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From Down Under – Austrailia

Kevin Rudd’s plan to break gambling addiction

AUTOMATIC teller machines will be banned in pokie venues in Victoria from 2012 in a war on problem gambling, Premier John Brumby has announced.

Victoria will become the first Australian state to ban the ATMs from the floor of pokies venues.

Cash machines will be banned from the end of 2012, when Victoria’s existing gaming licensing arrangements end.

Some venues in country Victoria may be exempt from the ban, in towns where there are limited numbers of ATMs.

Mr Brumby said he was not sure whether venues with multiple entertainment areas would be allowed to have ATMs in non-gaming areas, but that detail would be revealed when the new laws were introduced.

The Victorian Government is expected to announce the structure of its new gaming licences in coming weeks.

Mr Brumby said the bans could not be introduced any sooner because they were not part of existing licences.

“It hasn’t been a condition of existing licences. It does require the co-operation of the commonwealth (which controls banking regulations) and what I’ve indicated to you today is that we will be talking to the industry about a transition plan up to 2012.

Mr Brumby said he proposed the plan to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at a recent meeting and won the Prime Minister’s support.

“I said to the Prime Minister on Monday that I would be making an announcement this week and as part of that announcement I would be indicating that ATM machines would be removed from gaming venues,” Mr Brumby said.

“So I indicated that to him and, obviously, he thinks that’s a very good idea.”

Mr Brumby said he did not know what sort of effect it would have on pokie revenues.

Victoria collects close to $1 billion in tax from poker machines each year.

The move comes as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd mooted a similar ban nationwide.

The new Rudd Government war on problem gambling, revealed in today’s Herald Sun, has ordered that a review examine a reduction in pokie spin rates and the introduction of smartcard technology to stem surging losses.

For the full story written by Michael Warner and Ellen Whinnett visit

Don’t bet against him

A moving true story on how gambling can effect your life no matter who you are.

Don’t bet against him: Art Schlichter is rebuilding the life gambling destroyed

By JON SPENCER

News Journal

It was just like any football Saturday in Ohio Stadium from 1978 through 1981, when Art Schlichter had the rapt attention of his audience.

He had just finished speaking to a group of high school athletes and their parents, his riveting 30-minute address equal parts gut-wrenching and inspirational, when he reached down from the podium and squeezed my shoulder.

“This guy right here,” he said to the banquet crowd, “threatened me that if I didn’t do a good job tonight, he was going to call my parole officer.”

Schlichter still has his sense of humor.

This fallen hero, whose downturn in life would mock the title of his 1981 biography, “Straight Arrow,” has lost just about everything else because of a well-chronicled addiction to gambling.

It ruined his marriage, separated him from his two daughters for most of their lives, tainted his legacy at Ohio State, turned the once-famous No. 10 into a more infamous number in the U.S. penal system, destroyed relationships in and outside of his family and cost him his NFL career.

Not to mention at least $1 million he is believed to have squandered while swindling, stealing and conning, all to feed his addiction.

“I think about gambling every day, but the one thing I can’t do to be free is gamble,” Schlichter said, addressing the participants in the 30th News Journal All-Star Classic, a basketball game that benefits physically challenged children. “I want to be free. I want to be with my children. I lost my family and nothing can replace that. To build that back is very hard.”

On the same Wednesday that Ohio State was reeling in the nation’s No. 1 high school quarterback, Terrelle Pryor, the greatest quarterback catch in OSU history was in Mansfield baring his soul to a bunch of strangers. It’s become routine, cathartic.

Schlichter, 47, travels the country, speaking on behalf of Gambling Prevention Awareness, the non-profit organization he founded to educate others about the perils of compulsive gambling.

In addition to talking about all the wrong steps he’s taken, Schlichter enjoys talking about all the right steps his former school has taken under Jim Tressel — Pryor’s signing is the latest.

Pryor becomes the most ballyhooed quarterback Ohio State has inked since Schlichter was No. 1 in the nation at that position 30 years ago. The Miami Trace graduate would start 48 straight games and rewrite the record books. He finished in the top six of Heisman Trophy balloting three times, earned All-America honors, led the Buckeyes to a pair of Big Ten titles, within one point of a national championship and was the fourth overall pick in the NFL draft — all before his addiction overwhelmed him.

“The first thing I would tell (Pryor) is don’t believe anything anyone is telling you,” Schlichter said. “When you get all the hype when you’re young, and it happened to me, then you start believing it. You start believing you’re probably better than everyone else and you stop working.

“When you lose that edge as a college player or pro player, you can’t become the player you need to become. So I’d keep my head down, wouldn’t read the papers, work hard and believe what the coaches tell you and no one else.

“I’d assume Ohio State is going to take it slow with him. I’d hope they do. He’s probably wanting to be on the fast track and thinks he might start this year. I would encourage him to take it slow.”

Schlichter thought he was on the fast track at Ohio State, unaware that his road was leading to prison, not professional plaudits.

GAMBLING EASED INSECURITIES

A gambling habit that started at OSU with trips to the local horse track — he says he never bet on Buckeyes games — spiraled out of control. A first-round pick of the Baltimore Colts in 1982, Schlichter was suspended by the NFL for gambling one year later and was out of the league entirely by 1985.

He played for a few years in the Arena Football League, winning MVP honors in leading the Detroit Drive to the 1990 title. He also hosted a radio sports talk show in Cincinnati during the early part of that decade. But gambling consumed him.

To support his habit, he stole and conned money from friends and strangers and frequently passed bad checks. In an interview for ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” he estimated that he’d stolen $1.5 million over the years, if not more.

Schlichter’s wife, Mitzi, left him in 1994 after FBI agents raided their home in Las Vegas in search of money he’d stolen. Between 1994 and 2006, he spent the equivalent of 10 years in 44 prisons and jails across the Midwest.

Schlichter traces the start of his problem to his glory days at Ohio State.

“When I was 18 years old, I had a lot of insecurities,” he said. “Probably the only person who didn’t want to be Art Schlichter was Art Schlichter because I was a little self-conscious. People probably didn’t know that, but I was worried about what people thought at all times and I think it affected me as I went on.

“From 1978 to 2004, I gambled nearly every day. I tried to be an athlete, but in the end gambling was my first love. I thought it was the thing that made me feel the best, when in turn it was the thing that made me feel the worst.

“I lost a wife and two daughters, who are 18 and 13 now. In 2002, my father (Max), who was a compulsive gambler, committed suicide because of his gambling addiction. A lot of people don’t know that.”

Schlichter said his life hit rock bottom when he was caught gambling in prison and spent six months in solitary confinement. He was let out of his cell, handcuffed, for five minutes every other day to shower. He was fed through a hole in the door of his cell.

“At that point, I just wanted to die,” Schlichter said. “I thought this isn’t a way to live and I’m not going to live like this anymore. I got down on my knees and talked to the God of my understanding and asked him to help me get through the night.

“I knew better. I came from a good family … good father, good mother, they cared about me and loved me; good wife, beautiful kids, but I couldn’t stop. That night I stopped. Through the grace of God, I made it through that night and about 120 other ones.”

For the full story visit.

Should Casino’s Be Responsible?

Why not? It seems that this follows the current trend of people not being held responsible for their actions. She should be seeking help for her addiction not blaming the casino for losing money that she freely gambled away. If she would win it would open up a whole new way to win in Vegas, go …lose….sue.

Here is the release from the AP.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – She was an ambitious lawyer and TV commentator who starting going to Atlantic City casinos to relax and soon was getting high-roller treatment that included limousines whisking her to the resort.

Arelia Margarita Taveras said she was even allowed to bring her dog, Sasha, to the blackjack tables, sitting in her purse.

But her gambling spun out of control: She said she would go days at a time at the tables, not eating or sleeping, brushing her teeth with disposable wipes so she didn’t have to leave.

She said her losses totaled nearly $1 million.

Now she’s chasing the longest of long shots: a $20 million racketeering lawsuit in federal court against six Atlantic City casinos and one in Las Vegas, claiming they had a duty to notice her compulsive gambling problem and cut her off.

“They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping,” Taveras said. “I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping.”

Experts said her case will be difficult to prove, but it provides an unusually detailed window into the life of a problem gambler.

“It’s like crack, only gambling is worse than crack because it’s mental,” said Taveras, 37, a New Yorker who now lives in Minnesota. “It creeps up on you, the impulse. It’s a sickness.”

She lost her law practice, her apartment and her parents’ home, and she owes the IRS $58,000. She said she even considered swerving into oncoming traffic to kill herself.

In interviews with The Associated Press, Taveras admitted she dipped into her clients’ escrow accounts to finance her gambling habit. She was disbarred last June and faces criminal charges stemming from those actions, but is trying to work out restitution agreements in order to avoid a prison term.

Her lawsuit names Resorts Atlantic City, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, the Tropicana Casino Resort, the Showboat Casino Hotel, Bally’s Atlantic City, as well as the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The casinos denied any wrongdoing, maintaining in court papers that Taveras brought her problems on herself. Casino representatives either declined to comment for this report or did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Last month, a judge dismissed the Trump casinos, the Tropicana, Showboat and Bally’s from the lawsuit on technical grounds, but allowed Taveras to refile the suit against them by April. The suit remains in effect against Resorts and MGM because its allegations against them were more specific.

Joe Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, said casino workers undergo extensive training on spotting problem gamblers and referring them to help, including a self-exclusion list the state maintains. Gamblers can voluntarily bar themselves from casinos, either for a few years or for life. While they’re on the list, casinos cannot solicit them.

Dan Heneghan, a spokesman for the state Casino Control Commission, said 663 people are on the list.

“This can be a delicate situation, and it comes down to an individual’s personal responsibility,” Corbo said. “We can only suggest that they receive assistance and provide information how they can obtain help, but it is up to them to commit to seek it.”

Paul O’Gara, an attorney specializing in Atlantic City gambling issues, said it will be difficult for Taveras to prove that the casinos knew she had a problem but ignored it.

“How are you supposed to know whether this was a woman who was just having a good time, or had money and was just lonely, as opposed to someone who couldn’t control themselves?” he said.

Arnie Wexler, the former head of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, estimates there are 5 million problem gamblers in the United States, with 15 million at risk of becoming compulsive.

“Hers is not a rare case, believe me,” said Wexler, who says he had a gambling problem. “This is the most powerful addiction you can have without putting something into your body. You remember your first big win, and you think `Hey, I can do this again; I can get it all back.’”

As a young lawyer, Taveras made a name for herself representing the families of victims of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in New York City’s borough of Queens in November 2001, killing 265 people.

Her practice had 400 clients and earned her $500,000 a year. She appeared on TV and radio to discuss legal issues, wrote a guidebook for women dealing with deadbeat dads in the court system, titled “The Gangsta Girls’ Guide To Child Support,” and was a regular contributor to Hispanic culture Web sites. In 2000, the New York Daily News named her one of “21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century.”

As an escape from the seven-day-a-week pressures of her law practice, she started going to Atlantic City to unwind in September 2003.

During one five-day gambling jag at Resorts in June 2005, Taveras said, she existed on nothing but orange juice and Snickers bars that the staff gave her. On the fifth day, she said, a dealer told her to go home because she appeared exhausted and unable to keep track of her cards.

Taveras spent nearly a year in clinics to treat her gambling addiction. She filed her lawsuit last September, representing herself, and is now working at a telephone call center in Minnesota.

“Everybody says ‘You gambled and you enjoyed yourself, then lost your money and now you want it back,’” Taveras said. “They think gambling is fun. It isn’t, believe me. Not when you get like I did.”

© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Copyright © 2008 Betting Addiction

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