I watched a movie where the lead blows all his money at a casino.
Now in real life I think I have known maybe 1 person like that. it was this woman I worked with who back in the day was always flying to Vegas to gamble (this was before Kansas City had casinos). Now sometimes she had some big payouts but in the end she spent it all. She didnt care. She just liked gambling.
I have gambled maybe 3-4 times and didnt think much of it.
So have you ever known someone who gambled away all their money?
Yes, but not at the casino. It was with the stock market. He was buying options and doing very high risk trading and losing. Some weeks he would be up big money and weeks later would be in the red again asking people if he could borrow money for lunch. Like most gamblers he would brag about his winnings and not talk about his losses much. He was being well paid in his actual job, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him and the old beater he drove. He was gambling his paychecks away on the stock market. I should make this clear for the young folks out there, there is a difference between being a trader and an investor. This guy never invested, any money he had he gambled with it in the stock market.
Anyone who has studied probability in math classes knows it favors the house. Besides I never saw the attraction of gambling.
I have a friend who was heavily into betting sports games. He was new to the area and starting betting with another friend of mine, who is the top bookie in my area. The friend betting was very bad at picking winners and in a few months was in the hole about 10K. The bookie friend told me to try to get the other friend to stop betting, because he sucked at gambling, he was a nice guy, and he hated to have to break his legs.
The bookie told him he was going to stop taking his bets until he got paid up. The gambler made about 90K per year and did pay off his debt. He tried placing bets with the bookie again, but he wouldn’t take his bets. So he started placing bets through friends or with other bookies and was back in the hole again. Before long, he lost his house, his business, and his wife and moved away. Don’t know what ever happened to him, and sometimes I wonder if he got whacked.
Not casinos, but horse racing & dog racing. I know a guy who would get paid and then run to OTB to lose it, sometimes the entire paycheck.
I think if 2 ants were crawling across the floor, he would try to get someone to engage in a bet as to which one would be the first to reach a destination, and then he would probably put his last $20 on the action.
He lost a lot of money and a marriage over the years. Too bad, as he is otherwise a nice guy and very creative. He’s also good-natured and a lot of fun. Outside of gambling his earnings away, he was always trustworthy, in that he never stole things from others to feed his addiction.
He makes a pretty good living too, as he is talented and very likable, so his employers are willing to pay him well. He never lost a job due to his gambling and has been in his current job for 25 years or so, but he should have just worked for free because all he did with his money was piss it away.
It’s a tough addiction. I lost contact with him, but we have mutual friends. Age seems to have settled him down more from what I hear. I suspect he still gambles, but is more judicious about it. Hopefully.
Many years ago, a friend of mine had a serious problem with horse racing. He would typically drop a few thousand every weekend at the track. He could read and understand the Daily Racing Form just fine, and his selections were reasonable, but even the best handicapper is correct only about one-third of the time. Sure, he won some, but lost much more than he won. It’s the cost of entertainment when you drop $20 in an afternoon at the track; it’s the cost of the rent, groceries, and a car payment when you drop $2000 in an afternoon at the track.
He kicked his gambling habit eventually, realizing how much it was costing him. He hasn’t been to the track since. He knows I like to go for an afternoon of racing (at much smaller stakes, in my case), but he’s told me not to tell him when I am off to the track, and especially not to invite him to go with me.
My Mom said that before I was born (I’m the youngest), my Dad would sometimes lose his paycheck shooting craps on payday. This is a typical story of the second generation Japanese born in Hawaii. Go For Broke! The slogan for the All nisei (second generation) Japanese-American 442 Battalion is from shooting craps. Keeping going until you either win big or go broke. Two of my earliest memories before I was four were being held up to pull the handle on a slot machine (it was an Army casino in Japan) and playing house with my friend under the poker table, often falling asleep there.
In his later years, my Dad loved going to Las Vegas, but never won. His younger brother lost hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars there, tens of thousands of dollars at at a time. We saw my Aunt in Vegas once and when asked if my Uncle was there with her, she said. “Your Uncle lost $15K last week and now I have to try and win it back!” with a smile. The last I heard, they remortgaged her fully paid for house and sold it to pay off his gambling debts. They moved into a condo they own (no kids) and may have that mortgaged to the hilt too.
I’ve picked up my Dad’s habit and not only can’t afford to go to Vegas anymore, but really don’t want to. Not matter how much money I’ve gone with, I’ve never brought more than a $100 back. Like my Dad, it’s the playing, not the winning that counts.
This is a joke from the movies, but it really happened to me. I always made my girlfriend hold all the money so I didn’t spend it all at once. I asked her for $100 and went off to play some slot machines by myself. I built up the $100 to $1000, then put it all back. When I returned to my girlfriend, she asked “How’d you do?”. I said “I lost the $100”, then had to confess it was $1000 at one point, but I put it all back. She wasn’t amused!
I am convinced that there is a personality that is drawn to gambling.
On the one hand, my sister and I went to the casino in Sault Ste Marie, wandered around for ten minutes, looked at each other, said “This is fun?”, and left.
On the other hand my friend A’s girlfriend L loves gambling. She and my friend and I all met at one of the casinos in Niagara Falls. A and I wandered around the casino watching things for a while, but then retreated to a bench and read on our phones. L, on the other hand, was having a wonderful, exciting time playing various games. She stayed within budget, so there was no problem, but it really made me think.
What is the draw?
When my Dad didn’t go to Vegas, he’d play a coin (actually token) pushing machine at a local game arcade. He’d spend hundreds of dollars every time he went (which was several times a week) and the managers, with the approval of the owner of the arcade would shut down the machine while he went to get more money from his office (this was before ATMs were everywhere). If he was the last one to be playing when the arcade closed and there was a large pile of tokens on the edge, the managers would keep the machine turned off until he returned the next morning.
He’d hand handfuls of tokens to my girlfriend and I to play alongside him, but I had at least some control of my bad habit and didn’t always go the arcade with him.
When he suddenly passed away unexpectedly, he left a large amount of the remortage on our house which took my Mom 15 years to pay off.
Edit: My Mom shrugged it off with “He worked hard and at least he had fun!”
This is why I wouldn’t gamble. My Daddy had a bunch of disposable income in his retirement years. He disposed a lot of it at the track. During live racing season he was there everyday. He was a fair handicapper.
Sometimes I went with him and he’d hand me money to ‘hide’. It was exciting when he won. I could’ve really got into it. But I resisted. Somehow.
It’s like any other addiction. It can ruin you in so many ways.
My husband plays low stakes poker everyweek. He knows his limits, though.
What is the draw?
For me, and I suspect a lot of people, it’s the thrill of the chase with the outcome a letdown even if it’s a win. For me, it’s definitely an addiction, always looking for the next high. I know it’s an addition since I haven’t been to Vegas in decades, but sometimes still dream about playing the slots.
As I said above, for me it’s Go For Broke! Either win big, at least 10’s of thousands of dollars for me or walk away broke. It wouldn’t matter if I had to spend 100K to walk away with an extra 10K, it’s the idea that I actually came out ahead. I grew up around my parents friends who were all gamblers and having the same attitude. Las Vegas is called the 9th Hawaiian Island because so many of all ethnicities from here, go there.
More memories.
My parents taught me how to play poker, piyute (a local variation of poker) and hanafuda (an Asian card game similar to rummy) at a very early age, definitely pre-teens. Every New Year’s Eve, we’d gather at my Aunt’s home and after my Uncle came home from work, the piyute game would start. By my mid teens, I’d be called in to play when there weren’t enough players either at the main table or the sometimes spill over table when everyone showed up. Oddly, only my female cousin would regularly play, one of her two brothers would play occassionally play, and even then only for an hour or so. Also oddly, none of my second cousins every played. If they did play cards, it was games like rummy with no gambling at all.
The stakes in the piyute game never changed over the years, it was always $0.10 to $0.60 max, except for the last round, where everyone had a chance to deal and the stakes were doubled. Losing or winning was never more than $20-$30 for the night.
Also, during my teens, my parents would take me to another Aunt’s house to play Hanafuda with my grandfather (which at least in the version requires four players) . Again stakes were small, less than a dollar per game. My grandfather always cheated and never lost in the end. I brought it up to my parents once and they said just to let him win. They’d always give me back whatever money I lost to my grandfather.
In my early teens, whatever games we played, including card games during my and their parents poker night always had to have some literal nickel and dime gambling. It turned ugly when my friends started to collect baseball cards. We stopped playing for cash and bet cards, which I had to buy. None of us had any interest in baseball or any type of sports. We’d always open the packs and but by number of cards with no regard for who was on the card. Every card had the same value. It turned ugly when I was losing big to one of my friends and actually called my brother and sister to buy another box of cards so I could continue playing. Yep, just like a junkie begging for his next fix. My brother and sister obliged and I left my friend’s house without a single card. That day, we all realized the pointlessness of playing for cards that no one really wanted and we never gambled with each other again.
Even earlier than that, in grade school we used to play marbles for keeps. I sucked at the game and would lose gallon coffee cans of marbles to my friends. Again, my parent’s indulged me by buying me bags of marbles with the only advice being to learn to play better.
The last time I gambled, was over a decade ago when I had a party with my co-workers. My friend refused to play because he didn’t want to take money from people he knew. This struck me and while I won the first round of All In Poker, despite my playing half-heartedly, I purposely threw the second round, burying my final winning hand. So maybe there’s some hope for me!
I’ve been to casinos in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Australia; and casinos here in Canada (Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Saskatchewan), and horse race tracks in Canada, the US, and Australia.
I’ve also been to the casino in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. It wasn’t a fun place. From the security guards on the door looking like they were just wishing they could take someone down for some perceived infraction, to the drab decor, it seemed to me to be a place that screamed, “This activity is bad for you, but if you absolutely must, here you go.”
I never felt that attitude at Mara, Niagara Falls, or for that matter, at Woodbine Racetrack; all of which are in Ontario. Nor any other casino or racetrack in the US or Australia. I’ll return to those three in Ontario, and others in the US and Australia, but never to the casino in Sault Ste. Marie. Too drab and depressing and intimidating.
It can be fun and entertaining, as long as you stay within reasonable limits. “Reasonable limits” being defined as “what you can afford on entertainment.”
Look at it this way: some people spend hundreds, if not thousands, to go to a rock concert, especially if it’s by a classic performer or group. Others spend the same amounts to go to sports events–I understand that the cheapest seat at this year’s Super Bowl (way up in the nosebleeds) cost at least a thousand dollars. Broadway shows in New York cost hundreds to attend. To the people who go to such things, that’s the cost of entertainment.
People who like gambling might not go to rock concerts or sports events or Broadway shows (or they might, who knows?), but their preferred form of entertainment seems to be gambling. For me, for example, a pleasant summer afternoon is spent at the horse race track, with friends, drinking beer, BS-ing each other about our selections, placing bets, and celebrating our wins. Or commiserating when we lose. Either way, it’s a fun afternoon with friends, and is entertaining. If we lose on the day–well, that’s the cost of entertainment.
I have. My brother.
He was really, really bad. He gambled all the time, with the wrong people. He got into a lot of trouble, and had to be bailed out several times.
He’s fine now. He hasn’t made a bet in years. Decades, maybe. But it was scary when he was gambling.
It was educational for me, too. I had no idea just how much gambling was available to those in the know here in New York City. Sports betting, card games, craps games, whole illegal casinos. I learned a lot following him around and trying to either keep him out of or get him out of trouble. It was really amazing. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. The market will fill any demand.
I know a guy who likely has some form of mental illness that makes him fascinated by numbers. He carries around a notebook in which he keeps track of “important” numbers and spends a few hundred dollars every day playing numbers (illegally). I’ve been with him when he notices a number and immediately has to make a call to place money, sometimes a few hundred, on it.
His wife has an inheritance that she has set up in a way so that they can live comfortably on mostly interest. She has a job, as does he (in the numbers/betting industry). She looks at his number thing as a hobby. Occasionally he hits huge. I’ve been there when he had a paper grocery bag full of bills, and helped count and band $50,000. Of course he usually does not win, but at the end of each year his wife tells me he’s down no more than if he flew airplanes, collected race cars, or had a mistress.
Common to have moderate or worse gambling problems among my retired relatives.
An aunt and uncle burned through most of their life savings in their latter years. Another couple went to casinos far too often and had to skimp to get by. (And one of them had been a fire-and-brimstone preacher!)
Got a cousin that claims to win at the casinos. Even at playing blackjack. Right. Mrs. FtG has a relative that tells her all the time how much money is won with scratch offs. Never mentions the total spent, of course. Needs every penny so this is disheartening to know that a lot of pennies are being wasted.
(Leaving a grocery store yesterday I saw a guy at a table outside the door scratching off a ticket he clearly had just bought. It was freezing and windy. The table and chair were metal. Couldn’t wait to even get back into his car. Had to scratch it off now. Good to know the state is profiting off these people. :dubious:)
This may be key.
For me, in most cases – and I’m trying to think of an exception – the chase is work, work that I have to get through to get to the outcome. If I am going to do all that work, I want the outcome to be a win. And I would prefer to do as little work as possible to get the outcome.
Doing work and getting no outcome is the worst of both worlds.
Variable interval operant conditioning.
I’ve been a few times. I could see how it can be interesting and addicting to people. It’s just not for me, though. I have other vices I prefer.
The mother of my cousin’s son.
They (my cousin and her) were supposed to go on a cruise and she was supposed to make the arrangements.
A few days before the cruise he asked her if she had started packing. She said she would do it later. The day they were supposed to leave she finally admitted that she had gambled away the money that was supposed to be used for the cruise and she had never actually bought the tickets.
They are together, but not married. And never will be. She can’t keep money.
Yep - good friend in law school. Not only heavy gambler but also reasonably significant drug dealer. Not a good combination. Got him killed. Inherited a house, and lost it.