Australians gamble away more than 11 billlion a year on pokies. Credit:Andrew Meares "I just want people to know that they are being conned." Dolphin Treasure has been analysed by researchers at Monash University, and the legal action will focus on the uneven spread of symbols needed to win across the five "reels" central to the game. The legal challenge will also look into all the design features, including what is claimed to be a system in which losses are disguised as wins through images and sounds. Ms Guy started playing the pokies in Adelaide when she was just 17, at a club near her house.

Illustration: Matt Golding. She continued to play for 14 years, especially at her local shopping centre, where she worked, often playing during lunch breaks and after work. "It took over my life; half my life was wasted. I was hypnotised for a decade, I didn't know I was hooked, then someone said, 'I think you are hooked'," Ms Guy said. "I thought I had a fair chance of winning, but I found out that they are rigged. They trick with design features." She said it was clear that machines were designed to give punters a sense that they were scoring wins when in reality they were losing money.

The legal action is being supported by the Alliance for Gambling Reform, which is tired of waiting for governments to act on Australia's poker machine losses. Alliance spokesman and long-time pokies campaigner Tim Costello acknowledged that the legal action would be an incredibly tough fight. "This is the people versus Packer. And it's about time the people had a real win," Mr Costello said. "Adding Aristocrat to the case means it's now become David versus Goliaths. There are effectively two Goliaths. We can't let pokies money win the day this time." If the machines are proved to be misleading and deceptive, there will be major ramifications for the multibillion-dollar industry as well as state governments that receive billions in tax revenue from pokies.