STANLEY Leisure is the biggest casino operator in the UK with 41 outlets including four in London catering for high stakes gamblers. It also runs a network of around more than 600 high street betting shops as well as offering online and telephone gaming. Yet one of its biggest earners over the past 12 months has been fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) which over the past couple of years have come from nowhere to become a gaming phenomenon. A FOBT is an electronic gaming machine usually found in the corners of betting shops and offering a variety of games, with roulette and bingo being the most popular. It combines the relatively rapid speed of play found on a fruit machine with the higher payouts and more flexible stakes of roulette. Money is inserted either as notes or coins in the machine itself or using your debit card over the counter. The enormous popularity of the games has caused concern among gambling authorities and the industry has now agreed to a voluntary code of practice which limits the number of gaming machines, including fruit machines, to four per shop and a slowing down of the games. Nevertheless most of the main bookmaking chains are now raking in millions of pounds in profits from them each year. Profits from all of Liverpool-based Stanley's operations for the 12 months to May, 2004, was £41.8m with an astonishing £14m contribution from FOBTs. The company now has around 1,250 machines in a large number of its 628 betting offices. Some are outside of the UK so may not get them. Finance director Colin Child said: "They have proved to be extremely popular with our customers generating a very useful income. "I think it is fair to say the industry has been pleasantly surprised at how popular they have proved to be. "We came into the market a little bit later so I suppose we had a better idea what to expect." | 
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