Could be in any context. I do it a little on UFC fights but that’s a relatively low amount and I can afford I to lose any time I do. It seems like it’s becoming a really wide spread problem though, at least in the US. At the same time I don’t see why it should be illegal. Granted I also don’t think any drug should be illegal.
It’s all a scam as the house and all the intermediaries win, the client over time always loses, and somehow we keep doing it in the name of “fun”
I personally don’t do it, aside from small stake poker.
If it’s casual between friends, you do you so long as it’s consentual between all involved parties.
If it’s at a real and/or digital casino using real money, I draw the line. Don’t really support them personally.
If it’s something like an old PC casino game I played growing up where there’s typically no real loss besides your time, I’m okay with it. Same applies to games like Balatro or Clover Pit.
Advertising it? Haell nah!
Those online betting sites like the US ones where people have been using insider trading and tampering with sensitive equipment to win bets? Ban the hell out of them!
Sports betting? If it’s consentual between a few friends/coworkers, you do you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t support it because you don’t know whether or not any sore loser will do their best to harass you or worse.
As for legality, I am not a prune about it. Especially since my fursona loves the whole concept of random dice and card luck and at least the card and dice games ( when confirmed not to be rigged ) are mainly pure luck.
Gambling destroys lives. Making gambling illegal may be controversial, but I can’t see any reason to allow gambling ads.
If you want to gamble, then it’s your own life to ruin. If you advertise gambling, then you are ruining other people’s lives.
Ban gambling ads.
Hope to win, expect to lose.
I don’t think it should be illegal either, but there should defiantly be limits and protections in place so people don’t piss away their life savings over a slot machine.
Often people in difficult finical situations are the most addicted to gambling or playing the lotto because they are manipulated with hopes of a life changing big payout.
One simple idea to help, have a seperate bank account. You get a special “gamble debit card” that you can deposit up to 5% of your earnings from the previous year. Any kind of gambling can only accept this card - including food/drink at the facility. Winnings can be cashed out or used to refill the card.
Even if this isn’t a regulated thing, people can do this on their own - leave all the main cards at home and make sure you can’t transfer money to your debit without physically going to a bank.
I don’t have strong feelings about it either way. No real appeal for me
Just remember that it doesn’t matter if you have an addiction or not, the reason gambling establishments are as affordable or attractive as they are is because there are people feeding their entire life savings/retirement into them right now destroying their lives. They can afford for you to get that fun occasional win as long as the addicted keep them propped up.
I play micro stakes poker. Without gambling its likely that I wouldn’t. Its something I enjoying doing, am able to afford, and entertains me for less than the cost of going to the cinema for, potentially, a longer amount of time. So I suppose I view it as entertainment.
I take part in regular live low stake tournaments, which are more of a social get together than anything really competitive.
I’ll occasionally put a little on horses.
I think issues appears when there no bankroll. I allocate a set amount a month, if I spend it then that’s it. If not then whatever is in the account rolls through. Been lucky enough that I dont have to top it up often.
I dont think it should be illegal, I do think there should be more done about awareness, approaches, and pitfalls. I also think there are personality types which are more prone to issues and that could be identified and addressed by looking at deposit and betting patterns, but the industry doesn’t due to wanting to make money.
John Ralston Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion - The Dictionary Of Aggressive Common Sense sums it up pretty well:
GAMBLING, STATE - RUN When governments raise money by acting as croupiers, the systems they manage are degenerate and are closer to their end than to their beginning.
The Burmese, for example, could always tell when a dynasty was close to falling; it would set up a state lottery. Early in the 1970s, Western governments turned to licensed gambling to provide the funds which TAXATION no longer seemed able to raise. This initiative has been blamed on many specifics: the financial crisis, tax reform which drastically reduced the contribution of the large corporations, the cost of social programs. The combined result was a lack of money which turned into DEBT and that debt into chronic restraint.
From the moment a government encourages its citizenry to finance the state by gambling — which means by idle dreaming — instead of through creativity, work and productivity, that state is in an unacknowledged crisis.
The only nation to have prospered via gambling is Monaco, which is not a nation. It is a corporation specializing in tax avoidance presided over by a croupier prince.
Personally, I think it’s a mug’s game.
Sports gambling is based casino gambling is slop.
Lmao
I hate it.
I think gambling has tainted sports and is the epitome of corruption to the core. It’s very ironic that a baseball player by the name of Pete Rose, got a lifetime MLB ban for gambling, yet give it 20 some odd years later and Draft Kings is promoted which is gambling.
It fuels addiction, it makes people throw away anything they could that they could bet with, on the off chance, which is narrow, of winning it big.
It’s why I hate Las Vegas entirely, I hated it when poker games were nationally broadcast for a while at one point and so on.
Yeah Pete Rose and anyone involved with “fixing” odds in anyway are absolutely fucked. Part of what made me ask the question is how pervasive gambling sites/apps/books ads are literally everywhere.
I’m not much of a gambler. But I was addicted to a few substances many, many years ago, so I know how hard it can be to get out of an addiction and I don’t agree with the “that’s a relatively low amount (people) can afford to lose”: addiction is a bitch, no matter how high or low, end of the debate as far as I’m concerned as an ex-addict. But I also do believe adults should be considered, well, like adults responsible beings… responsible for how smartly or stupidly they want to spend or waste their one and only life on this planet.
I don’t do it because it feels like I’m throwing my money away.
Since I have a basic understanding of how odds work, I don’t do it because it is throwing my money away.
Gambling with any company is going to be negative expected value. However, I feel the same way gambling with individuals where the expected value is zero.
Not necessarily with sports betting though: Then you have a legitimate possibility of being more well informed than the bookies. A casino is mathematically rigged such that you will lose over time, that doesn’t apply to games of skill (sports).
I don’t gamble myself, but I seem to remember reading that the average person actually makes a net win in football betting (that is, more than 50% of gamblers are winning). Apparently, the betting companies make it up because you have a relatively small fraction of people that are losing big, and losing consistently.
That’s a common misconception. Sports gambling is exactly like casino games. Odds are skewed in exactly the same fashion in the house’s favor, the payout is lower than the win probability. In the long run, the house always wins.
Also, as the industry relies heavily nowadays on trading where any event can alter the odds in real time, I guess the only way to cheat the system would be akin to insider trading.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. You’re completely right that the house sets the odds it it’s own favour in order to make money, I’m not arguing against that.
My point is that setting odds in casino games like roulette is trivial, and there are no confounding elements that can suddenly make your odds wrong. In sports betting, setting the odds is highly non-trivial and pretty much impossible to do exactly. The better can look at the odds and consider whether they think the house has under-valued a certain game, which is possible, and bet on that. If the better is more well informed than the house, it’s actually possible that they make a net win. That’s completely different from a casino game, where the odds will never be in your favour.
I would argue that sports betting is a fair game, in the sense that the house sets odds, and you can consider whether those odds are in your favour or the house’s favour. Obviously, they will try to always set them in their own favour, but (also obviously) they can make mistakes that are exploitable to a well informed better.
Unless I’ve got some insider information on specific athletes or I’ve done enough statistical analysis to gain a statistical analysis to gain an advantage over the house, I don’t see myself getting positive expected value.
Also, it is in the interest of sports books for a rumor like that to propagate.
it is in the interest of sports books for a rumor like that to propagate.
Oh, definitely. I’m not sure about this at all, please don’t take it as fact.
I completely agree with you. My point is just that with sports betting the playing field is actually fair, in the sense that anything can happen and that the bookies and the betters are considering the odds based on the same publicly available information. That differs significantly from games where the house is mathematically guaranteed to win in the long term, while the gamblers are guaranteed to lose.
Except that the payout for those bets are generally done so that the house takes a cut of the overall action. The vig is baked into the payout for sport outcomes; betting on all the outcomes equally isn’t going to probabilistically give you the payout equal to what you’d buy in.
betting on all the outcomes equally isn’t going to probabilistically give you the payout equal to what you’d buy in.
Exactly. That’s why I’m differentiating between games of skill (i.e. sports) and purely statistical “casino games”. It’s possible to beat the house in sports betting, but only if you are genuinely better than the house at considering the odds. Of course, the house will always try to set the odds in their own favour, but it’s impossible for them to know the exact odds. Thus, a well informed player can, in principle, identify the games where the house has under-valued an outcome and exploit those.
This basically boils down to the fact that in a casino game, the probability of every possible outcome is known exactly, so the house can trivially set a payout that benefits them. In sports, it’s impossible to know the exact probability of a given outcome, so the house can make mistakes.
I agree if you’re talking casino slots or pretty much any highly orginized “game” at a casino.
I do it a little on UFC fights
I agree if you’re talking casino slots
Now is your time to shine and become smarter.
I’m talking among friends usually only a hundred or two on big fights. I don’t have or use any apps/books. Or sometimes 5-10 per fight if I have a few people over. I also have barely missed any events in years so my bets are pretty educated guesses lol. Again, this is money I can afford to lose and is just between buddies, it’s still gambling/betting though.
My friends and I occasionally have poker nights, and its a lot of fun. Its funny how stakes of $5 or $20 - just a few dollars or cents at most for most hands - make a game much more exciting.
The problem is the casinos and sports betting apps…
