GAMBLERS across Russia have cashed in their chips for the last time, after new laws banned gambling in all but four exempt locations.
In Moscow, city authorities said police had inspected more than 500 casinos, gambling halls and slot-machine arcades to make sure they had complied with the puritanical law that came into force yesterday.
"A total of 511 mobile (police] groups
inspected the addresses; all facilities have been closed down," said Leonid Krutakov of the mayor's office, adding that there was a special hotline for people to report law breakers.
Meanwhile, in St Petersburg, long regarded as Russia's most cosmopolitan city, well over a 100 gambling locations turned off their gaudy neon lights and shut their doors for the last time.
Anybody wishing to make a fortune or lose their shirt now has to make an arduous trek to one of four designated special gambling zones. These are Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea; the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast; the mountainous Altai district in Siberia; and a site near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov, host to the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
The law was initiated by Vladimir Putin when he was still president, and the Russian government hopes it will undermine organised crime and curb compulsive gambling.
Many in Russia believe that mafia gangs run the country's casinos, while there has been growing concern over the increasing number of gambling addicts spawned by the rising popularity of a pastime forbidden in the austere days of communism.
The evils of playing the odds are penned into Russia's collective consciousness. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler in a desperate race against time to pay off mounting debts run up at the roulette wheel, vividly depicting a gambler's rollercoaster ride from exultation to despair.
But the new law has left casino owners fuming.
Dismissing talk by the authorities that the special gambling areas will become Russian versions of Las Vegas, they point out that the zones are still nothing more than fields and building sites, and that it could take years before they are pulling in the punters.
"The idea of the four zones is completely unrealistic," Samuel Binder, deputy director of the Russian Association for Gaming Business Development, said.
"It's preposterous to think these replacements could be up and running soon. Even those who invest in gaming have realised they'd rather take their money elsewhere in the ex-Soviet Union or to Latin America."
Michael Boettcher, the British founder of Storm International, a casino group that includes the Shangri-La in central Moscow, said: "They've killed the industry overnight.
"It's like closing all the five-star restaurants in London because you're eating too much, and saying that if you do want to have them, you'll have to relocate to North Wales. Who's going to go? Nobody."
The law's critics also argue that, far from dealing a blow to organised crime, the legislation will simply foster growth in illicit activity as gambling goes underground.
Concerns have also been expressed over the social cost of closing down the gambling dens. Opponents of the new law claim that as many as 400,000 people will lose their jobs, at a time when the Russian economy is contracting and finding alternative employment will be difficult.
Former casino worker Alexsander Prispeshkin said: "I've been working in the industry for 17 years and cannot imagine working somewhere else. I've been thrown on to the streets."
With the Russian economy hurting, the gambling industry has also claimed that the country's coffers can ill afford the estimated £600 million drop in revenue it could experience now gambling has been closed down.
But the law's supporters give this argument short shrift.
"The fact that taxes from this business will not be in the budget is nothing when compared to the financial, economic, moral, psychological and physiological damage from gambling," MP Valery Draganov told the Kremlin's television station, Russia Today.
"Much greater damage has been inflicted on the families and players who have not just lost their jobs but, in fact, become seriously ill."
