Tiger337 Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 On 2/16/2023 at 12:07 PM, romad1 said: So, despite all the soft edges. Its a business owned by scum. It's not much different from pushing drugs. They are making a profit on people with addictions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 I have the anti-gambling gene. Even entering pools or squares or whatever it makes me enjoy the games less because I get too worked up over my bet. I just don't enjoy it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMRivdogs Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 I think I lost any real desire to gamble when I was 12. New kid in school from a northern state. I bet a bunch of new buddies about $15 on the Yankees winning the World Series. They were playing the Cardinals. A couple of years later FritoLay big promotional line was "Bet You Can't Eat Just One". I had a $50 bet on that one. I was 14, my parents caught wind and tried to sabotage it by stuffing several bags of chips in my foot locker for Scout Camp. I was rooming with the guy and we agreed to call it off about 6 months into it. I've made a few bets on horse racing, I have the knack of picking one that's great out of the gate but gets lost down the stretch. Forget casinos, I feel like I just need to hand $50 to some random person and head to the bar. I come out ahead that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 1 hour ago, oblong said: I have the anti-gambling gene. Even entering pools or squares or whatever it makes me enjoy the games less because I get too worked up over my bet. I just don't enjoy it. Ditto. When the original LOTTO game came out, I would buy a $1 ticket if the pot got over a certain value - $7M or something, because the stats said the odds had actually moved the game into the player's favor. But that didn't go on too long before they increased the complexity of the game enough to remove that possibility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 36 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said: Ditto. When the original LOTTO game came out, I would buy a $1 ticket if the pot got over a certain value - $7M or something, because the stats said the odds had actually moved the game into the player's favor. But that didn't go on too long before they increased the complexity of the game enough to remove that possibility. My wife pesters me when it gets very high because I think she's under some belief that your odds go up? I don't get it. She gets worked up b/c of the news stories and feels a sense of panic, like black friday shopping. As it is... if I had to pick the option of winning $5M vs $500M, I'd take the $5M every single time. $500M means you take on a full time job just managing the money and dealing with all the beggars. $5M you could stash away peacefully and retire and still live the same life ableit one that didn't require you to work at something you might not care for. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 I've been avoiding this thread because, based on its placement in General and not Political, I figured this was a pro-betting thread, so I wanted to respect that. But since you guys have opened up the floodgates, I'll just say that here I believe that gambling addiction is going to become the nation's #1 health problem in the next five to ten years, yet another thing we can thank our estimable Supreme Court for. 😏 And now I will drop this point, unless people want to keep talking about it, after which I can then blame you. 😁 From a personal standpoint, the best thing that ever happened to me was the moment I tried penny-ante gambling when I was in grade school and started losing immediately. I also got cheated out of winning by a bigger kid in my class. The last straw was, I had lost my last penny in five-card poker during lunch, I saw it was an old one, like, 1917 or something, and I said let me keep it and I'll pay you tomorrow, because I liked old coins. And the bigger kid grabbed my hand and forced the penny out of it to take it away from me. That was basically the end of gambling for me. Ironically, I run both a college football bowl pool and a March Madness squares pool (coming up next week!), but I do those because I love the pool-managing part, not the gambling part. And, true to form, I have won exactly one money position in the 26 years of the bowl pool, and exactly one first-round square in the seven years of March Madness squares. Meanwhile, I see the same people in my pool winning every year over and over again. That is just beyond my understanding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_Brian_K Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Not a big sports betting guy...too many variables IMO. I have placed a random wager here and there over the last couple years, but nothing more than a few bucks. I will sometimes pull a one armed bandit, but for the most part my bag is poker...it is more about the opponent with some skill laid in. I am not great at it...some may even call me bad because sometimes I drink too much when I play which is a downward spiral, but I still enjoy the heck out of it for the most part. Heading to Vegas for a work conference in a few months and plan to spend a good amount of time in Bellagios poker room and maybe even a couple random ones. It is not as enjoyable for me now as it was 20 years ago, but still a fun thing to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleterious Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Is it a big health problem in England? They legalized sports betting in 1961 and it doesn't appear to be a big health problem there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 I'm not opposed to March Madness pools, I'm not opposed to weekly poker games with friends, and I'm not opposed to gross, seedy, ugly gambling oases like Nevada—not even the cowboy casinos in Laughlin. What I am opposed to is a freewheeling barely-regulated gambling syndicate which is set free to seek out ordinary people minding their own business and lures them into gambling with things like implied promises of big wins and hit-of-the-dope first bets, promotions designed by AI data-crunching to get them to put as much of their money into gambling as possible, preferably all of it, I would assume. Now, I'm not naive—GAMBLOR has been let out of its cave, and there's not much chance of ever locking him back up. But If it were up to me, if gambling had to remain legal and freely available as it is today, I would outlaw any and all marketing activities related to gambling, with the possible exception of advertising destination trips to Vegas and the like, ads in which the gambling is only implied. I think if people want to gamble, they should have to seek it out on their own accord, not be subjected to being lured in. But that won't happen, because there's way too much money that the crooked politicians at the local, state, and federal levels can get from the organized crime-adjacent gambling empires for them to be concerned about something as boring and stupid as public mental health policy. Who needs a concerned government to get involved? Just say no! That's my piece and I am willing to just leave it here and say no more, unless, of course, people want to keep talking about it, in which case I'll be happy to oblige. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.