The Adelaide Casino won’t tell you how many security cameras they have watching your every move, but there must be hundreds.
Wherever you look in this glitzy palace of punting, there’s a bug-eyed camera keeping silent vigil over the customers and, presumably, the staff.
What hasn’t been known widely, until now, is that the Adelaide Casino also employs a team of human eyes scouring the gaming tables, banks of pokie machines and bars.
For 10 years, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, keen-eyed, affable Tony Morgan and his team have kept watch.
But the real surprise is what they’re looking for.
They aren’t here to catch card-counters or gambling sharks.
They’re here to look for people in trouble.
It’s a model that isn’t followed by any other casino that Morgan knows of – a team dedicated to heading off problem gambling and identifying people who are using gambling as an escape from other problems, which could be anything from domestic violence to depression.
Morgan and his fellow team members, such as Michael Cross, also a veteran at the Adelaide Casino, always surprise people when they tell them about their job, which is, often, to stop people spending money.
Gambling “first aid,” is how Cross describes it.
The Canadian, who once studied fine arts, has been patrolling the Casino floor on and off since 2001 and is one of the foundation members of Morgan’s team.
Like Morgan, he started in security.
“Maybe it’s just the personalities of people who end up in this job, but you like interacting with people,” Cross says. “Even with security I found it fascinating and I enjoyed it when things were not the best situations. What can you do to help? It’s a satisfying role to have … after you get through it all.”
Above the clank of coins and electronic tunes of the pokies, Michael says that the best step for people who are in immediate trouble is to get them out of the Casino.
“What we’re doing here is like first aid,” he said. “You’re dealing with it as a first responder and then we want to get them to someone who’s properly trained to deal with a larger issue. You can’t do that in this environment.”
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Christine Bell from Anglicare is one of those properly trained people.
As the head of the welfare agency’s financial and housing inclusion team, Bell understands why people might be sceptical about the Casino’s motives, but she is a strong supporter of Morgan and his team.
“It was very much a groundbreaking way for a casino to be doing business,” she says.
“You wonder where it fits in the business model – but it’s about making sure people are safe. Nobody wants a bad problem gambler in their venue.”
Tony Morgan has seen it all in his 10 years running the Host Responsibility Coordinator program. He’s even gone to counseling with a woman he identified at the Casino who was suffering in a terrible relationship.
But the experiences don’t pose a moral dilemma.
“No. We’re open,” he reasons. “We’re no different to Myer or any other business that opens its doors and tries to get people to come in and buy their product. People over-indulge in all sorts of areas. It doesn’t make what we do and what we offer wrong.
“More than half my life I’ve been here, but, you know, it’s a good place.”
Nevertheless, he knows that the existence of his own team is recognition of the fact that people can suffer.
“There is the recognition that there is harm, there can be harm, as a result of gambling.”
This is why Morgan started the host program in 2004.
There are just four full-time staff, plus a part-timer and Morgan himself. They cover the Casino every hour of every day. The shifts are long.
InDaily meets Morgan and Cross on a quiet Friday afternoon at the Casino.
Glamorous music plays and the tables are sparsely occupied. There doesn’t seem much joy there: blank faces watching the roulette wheels go round and round.
The pokie machines, though, are busy. Just about every customer is a woman of a certain age, and it’s quiet, apart from the electronic squeaks of the machines and the occasional clatter and muted cheer as a machine gives up some of its belly-full of coins.
Morgan says it’s at times like this that problems often arise.
Anglicare’s Bell says Morgan’s team provides good data on gambling patterns – and considering his small team of four covers every minute of the day, every week of the year, it’s not surprising.
“On a Saturday night, that’s what it should be about – it should be about people having a good time,” Morgan says. “It’s those after hours for the rest of the week where the people having a great time have filtered away.”
Where to begin to identify a problem gambler, or even someone with a different kind of problem?
It helps to understand a bit of gambling psychology. Like the fact that people with a problem start to treat a pokie machine like a person.
Bell has seen it – men whose “mistress” is a pokie machine (“they cost a lot of money and take me away from my family”).
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Morgan says the punter in trouble will get angry with the machine for not paying out. They lose sight of the concept of odds.
“Information about odds doesn’t help people understand – it takes recognition of all kinds of things in their life before they realise they’re in trouble,” he says.
Morgan and Cross say their work is, above all, about “customer service”. Making sure people are comfortable; having a good time.
Their modus operandi is to make contact – no matter how small – with as many people as possible.
“We often have brief conversations not related to anything until we can assess what’s going on,” Cross says.
“You get varied responses, as you can imagine. Some people want to be left alone. Other people want to interact or want to have information. We don’t identify ourselves as dealing specifically with gambling problems.”
Morgan says the signs of distress are often subtle, but he has learned to pick them. Little signs of aggression or frustration. Frequent trips to the ATMs, or even just being in the Casino for a long time.
The challenge is to build rapport – and do it quickly if someone appears to be in crisis.
That said, it can be a long process – weeks or months – between the time when someone in Morgan’s team strikes up a brief conversation with a patron and the moment that person admits they have a problem.
Once that happens, Cross says, the challenge is to get the person in touch with one of the network of welfare providers that works with the Casino.
Anglicare’s Bell says her team has four or five referrals per month from the Casino.
“They get to know people over time,” Bell says. “They build up relationships – it’s a supported approach.”
It’s a simple process, but the work is not always straightforward.
As Morgan says: “We’re a host. We’re just walking around talking to people – you don’t want to come across as invasive. I want people to make sure they’re acting natural, so we’re not putting any pressure on (customers) to act anything but normal. Because that’s when any indicators will extend out.”
Cross estimates he has about 10 seconds to build rapport with a customer.
“The whole process can be challenging … like what happens when you’ve identified a problem, the person has presented with an issue and they’re reluctant. It’s about trying to get them to open up and see a proper counselor.
“And we really want that success, you know, because barring somebody (from the Casino) – that’s fine. But then they go to the next pub.”
Cross tells the story of a woman who was reported to him from the “main cage” – the secure area where the cashiers provide change and chips to gamblers.
This woman had mumbled something incoherent to the cashier, and was clearly tired and upset. The cashier provided Cross with a description, and he soon tracked her down, finding her feeding coins into a machine.
“I just pulled up a chair and said ‘how are you going?’ Just a bland, open question. She didn’t look at me. I let her start – ‘it’s not paying out. I can’t win the jackpot’.
“It turned out her sister has a gambling problem. She started spending more money, chasing the jackpot.
“I said ‘my name is Michael, if you want to talk about it’. I finally got some eye contact and then walked away. She took a break, and left the machine.
“Later, she was still here – she told me how much money she had lost. She was stressing.
“We ended up motivating her to think about what was best for her at that moment. We got her out of here to get a cup of coffee.
“She said, ‘yeah, let’s talk about it’. That happened over a two hour period. Now I know her name. I know about her sister. We have a dialogue so she’s willing to explore things more. She has my business card, my name. It’s first name basis.
“I saw her the other day – she told me she was OK.”
