History of Pokies in New Zealand

After seeing the peculiarities of gambling on the Green Continent and its history, today a lot of players are curious about one of the most ubiquitous games in New Zealand and their origins.

Slot machines or as they are called in the language of true New Zelanders — pokies, nowadays are much sought after by the players and are rather popular online. Let’s find out how they appeared and developed into a top favorite gambling in the history of NZ.

First Electronic Gaming Machines

History of pokies in New Zealand began in 1991. However, they weren’t called pokies from the very beginning. When gambling became popular all over New Zealand and the electronic gaming machines that then were called ‘pokie machines’ or ‘one-armed bandits were admitted to be lawful for game clubs, sanctioned casinos, Returned Services Associations and hotels in 1988, they still didn’t gain the mass popularity as ‘pokies’.

At long last, in 1989 Parliament affirmed the presentation of gambling clubs throughout the nation, and by 2003 the six major gambling machines had been officially presented in the largest NZ land based casinos at the time: Christchurch, Auckland, Dunedin, and Hamilton, and two in Queenstown local casinos.

That was a great breakthrough for the betting and the fans of slots, since these games were straightforward and easy to play for everyone! Only a couple of years after the historical events, pokies were authorized throughout the nation and gained their immense popularity not only among the visitors from abroad, but also among the local citizens, who are nowadays known as one of the hottest gambling nations all over the world.

In the 1990s, the operators looked for Wellington and the capital city surrounding mainly to install the machines, but in 2001 the government announced that was going to leave the main city of New Zealand without gambling, had the seven functional metropolitan casinos closed because of the fear of gambling addiction among huge number of people and too high involvement in gambling of potentially dependent rates.

Modern Casino Pokies

Since land based casino industry is controlled by the government, all pokie machines are controlled or sponsored by the state organizations like charity funds and are established mainly in hotels and New Zealand pubs. They are especially liked by people due to generous payouts and interesting rounds. The maximum jackpot amounts are strictly regulated and taxed just like the national lotteries.

Six years ago the cash literally flew out at the slot machines of the country, amounted to 10.096 billion US dollars, the users benefits of 9,158 billion returned to the state treasury. However, it is 9% less than in 2004, at the peak of interest in gambling.
From 1 July 2009 all gambling machines of New Zealand are being legally equipped with the player information displays, which shows how much they have already played and how much time is spent, etc.

Such a measure should motivate the slots users to gamble wisely and take the breaks after the long sessions. It is interesting that, in addition to the ubiquitous devices, functioning in the country and six fully equipped land casinos, four are owned by SKYCITY (two in Queenstown, one in Auckland and one in Hamilton) and only two are managed by the individual operators (in Christchurch and Dunedin). Their activities are strictly controlled or even limited.

In May of 2013, for example, the Auckland casino was able to get permission to expand (230 additional sot machines and 40 new gaming tables) after the commitment to the conference center construction, for which they had to invest 402 million US dollars.
The latest decision is that all slot machines in New Zealand will be delivered by electronic monitoring system (EMS) was taken by the Warsaw Pact countries.

This know-how is prescribed by a new Gambling Act, which was adopted last September. According to this, the system will cover more than 22 thousand slot machines and more than two thousand people. All data will be sent to a central monitor, there it will be fixed, and reported on how much money has been put on a particular machine, how many wins it gave and what percentage of income was from it, etc.

Most of the gambling industry located in the state of New Zeland is controlled by national operators. In 2008, the cost of rates spent on gambling (by local citizens) was 2.034 billion NZD (1.78 billion US dollars). This is equal to 420 US dollars on each state citizen – 10 times more than was recorded in 1985.

Online Pokies

What else could cause such an unreal excitement and deliver such unforgettable pleasure and brighten your leisure if not game machines online? Online pokies have really been around longer than you might even suspect. New Zealanders, being extremely adventurous people are fond of online pokies not less than of land based casino games.

It was Microgaming that was the primary slots provider in NZ for online pokies programming that started delivering pokies online in 1994. Those first pokies like Fruit Fiesta and Cash Splash, for example, can even now be discovered online. Different pokies that have been available since then have gained the popularity towards the end of the 90s, and the players were acquainted with the pokies from Playtech and Cryptologic software providers. They were very essential when you contrast them with today’s multilined pokies that have insane activities, energizing sounds and immersive multi-level extra adjustments to join in, however, people are still delighted in the same way today as they were in those days.

The most established online pokies ordinarily had one winning payline and only three reels. Step by step after some time, the product organizations began to grow all the more energizing pokies that included more reels, more winning paylines and there was the presentation of exceptional images, for example, Wilds, Scatters and Bonus Symbols, etc. These images then transformed into Sticky Wilds, Expanding Wilds, Locked Wilds and Shifting Wilds, in addition to a few different varieties. Indeed, even the reels began to carry on differently on a few pokies.

However, the legal act adopted in 2003 prohibits the national online gambling or gambling on the websites operated by the home developers. A percentage of the online pokies that were produced years prior haven’t stood the test of time and you won’t have the capacity to discover them online anyplace, however the lion’s share of pokies that have been made can in any case  be effectively found with two organizations: Microgaming and Playtech that have produced more than 400 pokies alone, and these can all be found in many distinctive and completely authorized online casinos abroad.

If we talk about online casinos, the only way you can see or play in New Zealand officially are national lottery website that has no competitors and is not able to offer any other gambling online except the legal games and online equivalent of the top land based casinos. Today, the Internet network it is still one of the NZ players’ habitats.

The Internet epoch has introduced online gambling in New Zealand for the players of Kiwi land and despite the fact that island national gambling, geographically located in Oceania, is controlled by the Department of the Interior Affairs, and every game that includes playing for money is hold in the country and the winning sums return to the fund treasury of community, the players still have a way out in the face of the legal gambling websites operated from abroad that are out of the NZ gambling restrictions and legal jurisdiction of the state.

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