And then they wait. ''First one out is L.John … $100 is yours,'' the raffle host declares over the PA system at 2.35am, and the first punter collects his prize and walks back to his machine. For an hour there's a draw every six minutes. And every winner takes their money back to one of the 398 machines that have made St Johns, a suburban bowling club near Cabramatta which opened more than 60 years ago, the 14th biggest earning club in the state. Despite that, the club's CEO, David Marsh, says the draws are ''not related to gaming'' and simply ''a general members promotion''. St Johns Park is in the council area of Fairfield, home to around 2.6 per cent of the NSW population, or more than 180,000 people.

The council estimates the area's unemployment rate is more than 10 per cent, double the state average. Fairfield residents are twice as likely to receive the disability support pension as others in NSW. On the Bureau of Statistics' measure, it is Sydney's most disadvantaged region. And yet Fairfield is at the heart of Sydney's poker machine industry and the licensed clubs that dominate it. On every measure Fairfield, which takes in suburbs such as Cabramatta, Mount Pritchard and Bossley Park, is the stand-out location for clubs and poker machines in NSW. On the statistics alone Fairfield demonstrates why there can be no discussion of clubs and poker machines, and what they give to and take from communities in NSW and Australia, without considering this pocket of south-west Sydney. In the three months to May, poker machine players pushed more than $11 billion through NSW clubs, according to figures from the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing. Almost $1.3 billion came from Fairfield, more than double the next highest local government area, Canterbury, which had $600 million. Within these turnover figures, NSW clubs cleared a net profit for the quarter, before taxes, wages and the like, of $834 million. Fairfield clubs dropped $70 million into this profit pool, contributing almost 8.5 per cent. When it comes to the number of pokies, therefore, Sydney's most disadvantaged council area punches above its weight by a factor of more than three.

This figure becomes even more striking when set against the number of poker machines in the area. Clubs in Fairfield own about 4 per cent of the state's total. Not only is there an above-average number of poker machines in Fairfield per head of population, but the machines are played at almost double the intensity of machines in other suburbs. Little wonder, then, Fairfield's largest club, Mounties, is trying to repatriate pokies from satellite clubs on the northern beaches to its Mount Pritchard base. Mounties, also known as the Mount Pritchard & District Community Club, has 561 poker machines and ranks second in the state's poker machine profit rankings, behind the Bulldogs League Club in Belmore. At its Meadows Road premises, Mounties offers a major entertainment complex, childcare facilities, a health and fitness centre with pool, a hair salon, and drinks at any one of 13 bars. Last year, the Mounties Group earned $87 million, $67 million of which came from gaming machines. Yet while Mounties is atop the pile of Fairfield clubs, others are close behind. Fairfield's second club is the Cabra-Vale Ex-Active Servicemen's Club, known as the Diggers, which is the sixth most profitable poker machine club in the state.

Last year, the Diggers earned $67 million, $51 million from gaming machines. Diggers has a high proportion of so-called multi-terminal gaming machines, especially electronic roulette and blackjack tables favoured by the club's Vietnamese members. It's clear the club knows its market - the croupiers on their electronic screens are depicted as Asian. It's a similar story at the City of Fairfield RSL Memorial Club, Fairfield's third biggest and the ninth most profitable gaming club in the state. Of the $42 million it earned last year, $39 million came from poker machines, a remarkable 93 per cent. St Johns Park also earned $42 million last year, $34 million of which came from gaming machines, a more modest ratio of 81 per cent. Despite tough economic conditions, St Johns increased its revenue by 10 per cent last year, all of it due to gambling. The year before revenue leapt 22 per cent and the club is about to start a $25 million renovation mainly to expand its outdoor gaming area where smokers can play as they look out over the bowling greens. Laws require clubs to donate to the community and the club gave sporting and community groups $658,000 last year. It's a large amount, but barely one-third of the $1.9 million it spent on advertising and promotion. At 3am, St Johns bar staff stop serving alcohol. A couple of hours earlier the gaming room was teeming, with few spare machines. As the night wears on, people drift home and despite the $1000 doled out between 2.30am and 3.30am, the room thins to about a third full.

After running out of money, an elderly European woman propped on a stool with a walking stick says she would have gone but is waiting for the raffle. When her daughter's name is drawn out, the pair, like all the other winners, head back to the machines. Like many clubs, the machines in St Johns have an ''attendant'' button, a sort of room service so pokie players don't have to leave their machines to get a drink. The practice is banned in Victoria but popular in NSW. Attendants are kept busy selling alcoholic drinks but most go for the free soft drinks and it's the ''slushee iced coffees'' in tall glasses that are in heaviest demand. A tense Fijian woman, aged about 70, is playing the Hot Chili machine. She drinks lemon squash and shares a box of nuggets with her disabled adult stepson who waits patiently for the club to close so he can, once again, walk his mother home. ''I've lost $400 tonight,'' she says, snorting involuntarily each time she smacks the machine and chases her losses. ''I lost $3000,'' she adds, snorting again, before locking eyes back on the spinning reels, too distracted to explain.

It is clear St Johns' cash draw encourages some people to extend their stay at the club. Yet Wendy, a counsellor who has worked in the area, says such largesse is not usually needed to attract serious gamblers. Serious gamblers, she says, do not break their rhythm. ''Once they are on that machine, the world could blow up around them, and they really wouldn't notice,'' she says. (Wendy is not the counsellor's real name; she fears her employer will lose funding from the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing if she speaks out. This is a common fear among those paid to clean up the mess of problem gambling.) ''Often people will say to me: 'I looked up and, oh my God, I've been there for five hours. I didn't eat anything, I didn't drink anything, I didn't go to the toilet.' ''And then I will ask them how much money did they put into the machine and they'll go: 'I don't know, I was just feeding it money.'''

Yvonne, from nearby Wentworthville, echoes Wendy's description of the mindlessness of many players. ''Your mind stops, you don't think,'' Yvonne, who developed a gambling problem after taking up with a boyfriend who liked to punt, says. ''Everybody's got problems and concerns. Sometimes your head gets too loud and too busy, and if you gamble, if you sit in front of a machine, you don't think.'' Yvonne estimates she has lost about $100,000 in the past eight years and after running out of money she is now trying to kick her gambling habit. She has not told her adult children about her losses and is working with a counsellor to try to find another activity to replace the quietude gambling gave her. ''Apart from the money you don't have a care in the world,'' she says of the attraction of poker machines. Yvonne used to gamble at just one club and research by the clubs shows many poker machine players value regularity.

In its application to the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing to introduce another 60 machines to the area, Mounties cites a survey of its patrons suggesting that few gamblers like to travel far to play. Almost two-thirds of all gambling Mounties members play only at Mounties. Toai Thi Nguyen, an illiterate 55-year-old Vietnamese mother of four, also gambled at just one club. She racked up debts of $28,000 to loan sharks in 2003 when she first started gambling at The Star (then Star City) before her family got her to sign self-exclusion documents. But in 2008, she started gambling again, this time at the local St Johns Bowling. Loan sharks lent her $25,000, which grew to $40,000 as her lenders piled on high interest rates. With no hope of repaying the money, Nguyen succumbed to their threats and flew to Vietnam, where a gun was held at her head. She returned with 10 kilograms of pseudoephedrine, used for making ''ice'', hidden in her bags. When District Court Judge Robyn Tupman this month sentenced Nguyen to five years in prison, she attacked St Johns for allowing a member, whom she described as ''mildly retarded'', who'd never had a paid job and who had banned herself from a casino, to lose $25,000.

''It is unfortunate in the extreme it seems to me that registered clubs, like the one referred to here, allow this sort of problematic gambling to occur to the extent that it did,'' the judge said. ''That this was allowed to occur by an organisation trusted by the community of NSW with a licence is a matter of concern.'' Nguyen's case was one ''where upper limits on daily gambling amounts might well have saved this woman'', she said. ''In the absence of safeguards like that, however, it seems to me that clubs such as this one owe a greater responsibility to those who they allow to play their poker machines and continually lose, and to the community generally, in order to discharge their general moral duty to the community and to those who they allow through the front doors of their premises,'' Judge Tupman said. At the same time Nguyen started gambling at St Johns, the club was applying for extended opening hours. To restrict the damage caused by problem gamblers, the Gaming Machines Act requires clubs and pubs to stop machines from 4am to 10am, but many don't.

Clubs and pubs can apply to the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing to halve the shutdown period from six hours to three on Saturdays, Sundays and sometimes during the week. Exemptions are granted if other clubs nearby are open late, if clubs traded late before laws were tightened in 2003, or if shutting machines down causes financial hardship. But to get an exemption, clubs must show all required harm minimisation measures have been taken. Big clubs have been successful in reducing shutdown hours and most of the top 10 earning clubs now stay open until 6am at weekends, and some every day. Bulldogs League Club earns more gambling revenue than any other club and closes only from 6am to 9am seven days a week, as does Bankstown Sports Club, ranked number three, and the sixth-ranked Parramatta Leagues Club. St Johns said it wanted 6am closing for shift workers and members who wanted to watch sport on pay TV and could not afford to do so at home. It won approval early last year and since then has stayed open until 6am at weekends. However, Fairfield Council insists it only has approval to stay open until 3.30am at weekends.

A fortnight ago, the club lodged a new development application seeking permission for the ''proposed'' 6am closing. Mr Marsh, said it was to ''ensure consistency'' with planning laws and the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing's approval. When the last soft drinks are served at four, there's nothing to do but gamble. By 4.am, the numbers have thinned further and the last 38 people remaining are playing intently. Red ricepaper lanterns hang over the electronic roulette and blackjack games where nine women, all middle-aged Asians, are still busy. One flicks through a pile of $100 bills before slipping one into the machine. Wendy says her clients are often drawn to the homeliness of clubs. ''The younger males tend to be in pubs and there's usually alcohol related with it,'' she says.

''With the more middle-ranged to older people, especially the females, they like the clubs. Because it's safer, that's often the words that I've been told, it's: 'I feel safe. They know me, they know the drinks I like, they'll say hello to me.' One lady said: 'I feel like I've come home when I go there.''' The club industry and its defenders say rates of problem gambling are falling. They say the attempt to impose a ''pre-commitment'' system on poker machine players, as promised by the Gillard government, will only hurt clubs and provide no benefit to the community. ''My concern is that people believe that clubs are venues only for poker machines,'' Tony Issa, the Liberal MP from Granville, told Parliament recently as the O'Farrell government introduced legislation to give clubs almost $300 million in tax breaks. ''That is not correct,'' he said. ''Clubs are part of the social fabric of our society.'' Until 6am.