An excellent article.

As a Tasmanian nowadays, though, I would hardly describe the Launceston operation as "just down market pokie den"

Every now and then there are a small number of people who walk away from gambling with much more money then they invested.

Not long after Wrest Point opened Zeljko Ranogajec and David Walsh started to put their mathematical skills to advantage to win at black jack.

They moved onto punting on horses where they placed bets on almost every horse in almost every race. I believe the punting just about broke even but the big money was in rebates. From memory they negotiated control of a hotel TAB licence and their profits were the rebates from the TAB. I read once that Walsh described this as a "money mine".

Pokies provide too much income for governments to want to change legislation. I've lost count of the number of stories I've heard about lives ruined by pokies.