Bit depressing to think that there are people having their lives (and often the lives of those around them) ruined by gambling… Even more depressing is the fact that there are companies freely exploiting the previous fact. What a time to be alive…

The only gambling I do is buying lottery tickets when I’m having the worst urges to kill myself. A little trick to wait just a bit longer. “You can wait until you get the results, it’s only couple days”, and then the worst urge manages to pass in that time. It’s pretty pathetic

Ublock Origin users:

They must make an absolute fortune, because I see so many ads for shitty online pokie websites.

do yall seriously not use adblockers

I always describe gambling as non-alcoholic vodka.

It just does nothing for me and leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

Never once in my life have I felt the appeal of gambling.

All I needed to learn is that statistically, the house comes out ahead, and that was that.

A friend once insisted on dragging me out to a casino, and I came up with a hare-brained plan for blackjack (since it has the best odds of victory). I decided to double my bet every time until I won. But only up to as much money as I was willing to lose, because there’s a low chance for this strategy to go poorly very quickly.

I made enough money to pay for the entire trip, and then I never gambled again for the rest of my life. So that’s my story of how I came out ahead.

What are you even doing that you see these ads. I hardly see any ads.

I just hope to the universe my nephews are not drawn into this.

I probably dont have the gene, but I dont feel cool for not clicking an ad. What I mostly feel is rage that the promotions are so obviously geared towards getting the potentially addicted to try it by offering $100’s of free (bonus) bets.

And at the end they have the audacity to mention a helpline.

I’ve gambled twice in my life. The first time was sitting in a gas station casino because my buddy’s car overheated on the pass. Put $20 into a keno machine, lost about half of it, realized I could have gotten several beers instead. Got annoyed with myself and cashed out.

The second time was in Vegas. Same buddy gave me a massive hit on a vape pen and dragged me over to a blackjack table. He dumped some chips in front of me things happened, the table was a lot of fun to look at, the dealer cleared her throat in a really annoyed way because I was grooving on the pattern on the back of the cards instead of playing. I handed the chips back to my buddy and told the entire casino I was too high for this shit.

I guess I don’t have the gene. I’ve got an addictive personality in general and that’s been fun to deal with, but I’m glad it doesn’t extend to gambling.

I was in Chess Club at school (I know, I know, quite the jock!). We played chess. Then we got bored of chess and played backgammon. And backgammon without a bet is dull, so we started gambling. Then gambling became the point of playing. So we moved on to poker.

I remember one poker hand. The deck was made up of about five different packs of cards. Jokers, black twos, one-eyed jacks, bedside queens, and suicide kings were all wild.

I ended up with a hand of five aces. Two were real aces, three were wild cards. I had to raise. I mean, how can you not raise with five aces? What is the point of playing poker if you don’t raise with five aces? Sadly, two other people also had five aces and one of them had three real aces and only two wild cards so they won the hand.

I lost £20 on that single hand and absolutely hated every single moment of playing it because somehow I knew, deep down, that I was going to lose. That was a lot of money for me back then and there were other, far better things I could have dropped it on - LPs were about £5 back then, video games £10.

But, it was a great early lesson on the ‘gotta keep going’ mindset of the gambler combined with the certainty that I was going to lose my money. I’m glad it happened, despite the short term remorse I felt immediately afterwards. I’m just not a gambler. One of the other kids from that same game went on to owe someone else £300 by the time we left school.

I’ve been to casinos a couple of times but took some good advice with me. Think about how much you’d be happy to spend on a night out. If you were going to an arena concert, or the theatre, or a flash sit-down meal, how much would you pay for the night? Think about a casino in the same way. You take a set amount of money which you’re going to ‘spend’ on entertainment. Once you’ve lost all of that, you leave the casino. If you find youself up on the night, hurrah.

I remember in school doing statistics and probability. There was a question to calculate the probability and chances of winning a bet, and we got a near zero answer. I then asked my teacher if that means the person is actually going to lose. She confirmed yes, and warned us that this is why you have to be careful with gambling and being in debt as a result, and being involved with loans sharks who prey on those with gambling problems.

I’ve personally witnessed what gambling does to a person and their loved ones so I despise it. A lot of the gambling are rigged and so you are more likely to lose.

I tell people that if they’re going to gamble, do the ones with more likelihood of success. Poker is rarely rigged, if ever, because it is based on pure psychology of the players. Investing and stock trading has a more established science, despite the occasional stock manipulation. Although, if one invests in more reputable companies with long term growth and only put in the amount of money the person is willing to lose, hardly anybody goes bankrupt with investing.