There’s no question that horse racing is MUCH more complex. It’s also very forbidding for a newcomer who, unlike you and me, didn’t have family and friends to teach them the basics.
On the other hand, I think Dopers would find the intellectual side of horse race handicapping to be highly satisfying, since most respondents here are raising all the same objections that I have to casinos - but I love racing. Great mental workout.
It isn’t the aversion to gambling in younger people that troubles me, it’s that you see few young people smoking. What’s up with that?
I dunno, there was a big surge in popularity of competitive poker (and poker variants) a few years back, and a lot of young folks I know got really into it. A lot of guys’ nights out to nearby casinos, and I still know a number who participate. The online gambling world was/is also pretty young-skewing-- and if a decrease in young people attending real casinos is evident, I’d bet this is a big reason.
I’m 55 and I don’t want to go to those places because they are full of sad looking old people with that look of desperation on them. A week in Vegas made me want to cry. What young person would want to be around sad old people?
I love Las Vegas, IMO its one of the wonders of the modern world.
That aside, I would have thought that on line gambling has more serious consequences then anything else, that and betting offices.
I’m still not getting this…as I said upthread, half of the people at the poker tables in my casino are young people. So what gives? Why are they eager to gamble while other young people are not?
Blackjack is fun. I can play it on my iPhone for free, though. All the fun of amassing a massive (faux) bankroll, and none of the drawbacks. And, like Student Driver said, I bet a lot of the younger set do it online rather than in a casino.
I’ve been to Vegas, and I did kind of like it because of the pervasive air of desperation and suffering veneered by luxury (or “luxury”, depending on the casino), but I’m just weird that way. I also gambled a total of fifty cents, and it was only that much because the first slot machine ate my quarter. I mean, I know it’s going to take my money either way, but I wanted to see the spinny thing at least once.
I’d bet that the ambiance has a lot to do with it. I’d also bet that that ambiance has made it seem somewhat. . .I don’t know, unclassy. And if it doesn’t appeal to the upper class, that sort of trickles down (like names do, for instance) to more and more socioeconomic groups that’re lower on the totem pole, until you get to the point where almost no one younger does it. Maybe in ten or so years, people will pick it up as being retro.
This is anecdata and nothing more, but in my limited experience, younger people have more lively choices for entertainment than geezers like me and my cohort did. Young people now are playing World of Warcraft or something more recent. And playing Angry Birds on their iPhones. Or playing any number of games on their Wii.
Something’s gotta go, and it seems that the stuff my g-g-generation grew up with - card games, and board games using conventional dice - are played much less frequently by young folks nowadays. If you don’t play cards in general, you’re probably not going to play much poker. And if you don’t roll dice to move your pieces around the board in Monopoly and all those other board games we used to play, you probably aren’t going to graduate to shooting craps.
And there go most of your casino games, right there.
So: casinos have a lot less to offer to young people than they did to my cohort. And they face more competition in the way of fun things to do, many of which are free, and many others that cost a hell of a lot less than spending a few evenings in a casino.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that young people go to casinos less than older folks do. And I would expect this cohort to go to casinos less when they get to my age than my age group does now.
I’m not in the “young” demographic anymore, but I’ll chime in anyway.
When I was a kid, for whatever reason, I was obsessed with gambling and casinos. I’m not even sure what caused it anymore, but I was. Not with the actual gambling part, mind you, though I did enjoy playing poker and blackjack, but with the trappings. Casinos, felt-covered tables, dice…and I read John Scarne’s gambling bible cover to cover. I knew the rules to obscure games and common ones, I knew the odds for craps and baccarat and various poker games, I wrote stories where my main characters were a Las Vegas casino owner and a professional gambler. My parents took me with them to Vegas a few times and I was in heaven, collecting dice and cards and watching people and buying every gambling-related souvenir I could afford. I even briefly flirted with the idea of going to UNLV and majoring in casino management (dodged a bullet there, for sure!)
Then I grew up and discovered that (a) I don’t really like risking money on things I’ll probably lose, (b) most of the people in the casinos were much older than I was, of the…shall we say…polyester demographic, and they smoked like chimneys. This is attractive and fun? Um, no. The spouse and I took one of those $5.00 junkets to Vegas when we were in college (we weren’t married yet)–go on a bus, get there, gamble for 4-5 hours, then turn around and come back. We spent our whole time playing nickel slots and people watching and trying to avoid the smoke. It was the most depressing thing I ever saw. Hordes of old people smoking and gambling, desperate women handing out “coupon books” like they were filled with $100 bills, guys sleeping it off in the back of McDonald’s…No.
The final straw was when we went up north to hang out with ocelots at a preserve, and at lunch time we all went to the Indian casino for lunch. That was the most depressing place ever. More old people in polyester smoking like chimneys, depressing decor, a general aura of desperation…I couldn’t wait to get out and get back to the ocelots.
So after all that I still kind of like the idealized idea of casinos, but the reality–not so much. I haven’t been back to Vegas for more than 20 years, and I don’t miss it.
Poker’s different than the other Casino games. There’s a competitive aspect to Poker that is absent from the others. (I guess Baccarat is a genteel exception.) Though you can bet either for or against the shooter in Craps, I don’t think there’s quite the same competitive aspect that there is in Poker. We have a group on the Dope that plays weekly for bragging rights—no cash changes hands. (thankfully, in my case.) I can’t see us setting up a weekly Craps tournament, or Roulette. Sports betting can have that competitive aspect too, though, and there are several pick 'em contests on the Dope every year.
Moreover, while “everyone” knows that the odds are stacked against you in all other table games, and are mostly against you in Blackjack, that’s thought to not be true in Poker. As SenorBeef talked about in his post, the rake is often prohibitive enough, particularly at low level games, to make Poker unbeatable too over the long run. And for the poker players savvy enough to figure out how the rake eats into their expected win rate, many have the delusion that they’ll be one of Beef’s 5%.
But mostly Duke, I think it was the internet poker boom that explains why poker is different than other casino games as far as being popular to younger people. With Black Friday, most of those online guys have to go play in person if they want their fix.
Oh, and as far as video games and popularity go, I thought it was a rule or regulation that casino video slots were legally prohibited from many of the features of video games, like increasing incremental difficulty, so as to not be as addictive as video games? (Add me to the list of New Vegas players who could have given a shit about playing Caravan or gambling in the casinos. Much easier to kill Legion assassins and sell their gear.)
This is strange, I would’ve never guess that “boring” would be one of the answers. I consider myself as a youngish person with a very short attention span. Gambling activities are one of the few activities can hold my attention. Hearing the clank of poker chips, watching cards being shuffled at the blackjack table, hearing melodies radiating from slots, the flashy decor, and the distinct smell (excluding the smoke!) at the casino send me on some kind of emotional high. Very similar feeling to seeing/smelling/tasting alcohol. Watching porn. Diving off a cliff. Etc. A very gut feeling. And again, there’s a possiblity that I might walk away with a lot of money, despite the odds.
This needs to be broken down for me. Are these phrases a code-word for something else? I don’t notice such distress. Well, I do kind of, but I notice it everywhere. Malls, bars, people walking down the street, retail workers, etc. I just don’t notice it more at casinos.
“pervasive air of desperation and suffering”
"the most depressing thing "
“zombied out and sad”
Blackjack has already been pointed out as wrong, but here is a good article on why being good at poker … is like difficult: it takes time and work, with lots of competition, concentration and time. You can spend less effort on a normal job and earn money the safe way much easier.
It could simply be that the younger people play online instead of the casinos; since the OP used his own (limited) observations in casinos and friends circle, the same percentage of population that falls for the “But I can win” fallacy in casinos could be playing and loosing online but still be absent in casinos.
More anecdata here. When I turned 18 my family piled in the car and we went to the casino (what can I say, I didn’t drink then :p) and I never really enjoyed it. Worked in one for awhile, and it appealed even less. When I was in college full time I watched several classmates gamble away their book money and constantly go back to try and win so they could buy the texts (I went a few times, it was them who showed me blackjack).
Nowadays when I go it’s being dragged by a friend my age who loves them. She can sit at the slots for hours on end, and supposedly wins lots but I’m sure I only hear of the times she does win. When I go with her I tend to throw a 20 down the pit that is the slots to keep her company until that is done then I head off to the cheapest blackjack table which I find more interesting because there is some interaction and fun that way.
Poker seems intimidating to me for some reason, I play and enjoy card games (or did, few friends play card games and I miss a rousing hand of Shanghai Rummy or Hearts or Canasta). One time I played poker in a work tourney (not my work, friend’s but anyone they invited could come and buy in was only five bucks). Casual like that is more my speed, casino seems like too much to me and none of my friends play casual so it’s not going there.
Otherwise the casino does seem seedy to me. Some near me have concerts or good buffets and those appeal more to me than the gambling.
While some people play the lottery addictivly and spend too much, the lottery is far less addictive than a casino, and also cheaper. I haven’t been to a casino yet (at almost 40, I’m over the age group of the OP, though), but like to buy a scratch card once a month or a charity lottery from the Red Cross at the fair. That’s because I don’t have to spend time and effort learning the rules (if the 6 out of 49 numbers is too complicated for me*, I can just pick a scratch card).
It’s also less likely to become addictive because of the time. In roulette or blackjack, a new situation comes up every few minutes, so you can burn through a lot of money in one hour. But if you play lottery, you have only two drawings a week.
However, that takes time to think about. If I don’t feel like it, I skip it. Other people I know find that picking the right numbers is the whole fun in playing.
Oh hey, I bet (heh) you saw my grandmother! She was one of the non-smokers and would’a had an oxygen tank with her. (She’s why I have an aversion to gambling.)
Sounds about right. But if I were to summarize why I play (and I’ve only recently started, I might get bored in a hurry):
I like card games and poker in general. I played poker before the boom, during, and after.
I’m a stats person and I like figuring out odds in my head. I have to do this for work but it’s nice to be able to apply it to something on the fly…keeps my mind sharp.
I’ve noticed that bluffing in poker helps my confidence in other areas. I don’t feel like I’m constantly betraying emotions, which was a big concern of mine before. Not after I bluffed that guy into folding his A-K when I had nothing.
Poker is a game of human interaction. In fact it’s the game of human interaction in some respects–chess might lay claim to the two-player games, but poker reigns supreme amongst games of more than two players. Reading other players at poker helps me read other people in life…which I have always sucked at.
I can play in a poker tournament for $45 and play for two or three hours, with an 85% chance of return of funds! (OK, that’s the stats guy in me speaking since that money is theoretical, but still…) So for theoretically $6.75 for two or three hours I get all of the above. That’s not too bad.
Yes, AFAIK. “Fruit machines” in the UK used to play that way, but I seem to remember a law was passed stopping that. Anyway US slots have never had variable difficulty AFAIK.
I played as many gambling games in FNV as I needed to to get the achievements then stopped. I don’t think I ever won a game of Caravan…who did? The game was so confusing, and this is coming from someone who just about memorized Hoyle’s Rules on Cards when he was a little kid.
What’s a “vig”?
I never wanted to bet on sports because I suspect - esp. given the many scandals where actual dealings were exposed - that most is fixed. So you can’t win big.
People who like watching sports seem to like betting small amounts just to make the watching more interesting, though.
I once thought that if you calculated the right amount, you could bet on a soccer game with all possibilities (0, 1, 2) with different amounts at the different rates and come ahead no matter what result. But calculating three different amounts with three different rates was too higher math for me to do for fun.
Heh, you sneakily answered your own question. “Vig” is the percentage of your bet that the operator takes to ensure that it is impossible to be ahead on betting all three ways no matter what the result is.
Let’s say Team A and Team B are completely equal, and there is an equal chance of win by Team A, win by Team B, and draw. If I offered you odds of two-to-one (essentially you win two plus your original bet of one if you pick correctly) on each outcome, I’m not going to be making a lot of money. If you bet one on each of the three outcomes, you’ll win three no matter what the result is. Sure, if you bet on Team A and they won, I’d pay you, but I’d be hoping other people bet on the draw or Team B to even that out.
So I want to take a “vig” or a percentage of the odds to make sure you can’t cover all results and make money (or break even, cause a guy has to eat). I’ll offer odds of 1.8 to 1, so if you bet one on each outcome (three total), you get only 2.8 back no matter what the result.
It would help to think of poker as something seperate. It’s a game between players that the house hosts and takes a fee for hosting, but the house isn’t involved in betting. The odds aren’t inherently stacked against anyone in poker for that reason. So the money will flow, on average, to the best players. Which is an entirely different dynamic than the rest of casino games - from that perspective they’re pretty much entirely different types of activity.
Young people are better at poker. They grew up in an era where huge amounts of information about it were available, they mostly started playing online where the games are far tougher because the average knowledge level of every player is much higher, etc. When I’m at the tables, I’m much more wary of the 24 year old kid who’s obviously an online player who might be in the first month of playing live than I am the savvy old live player who might’ve been playing poker a few times a week for 10 years.
The scene has especially changed recently now that the US has effectively banned online poker. There were thousands of people making a living that way, and suddenly it just up and dissapeared. Some of them made the transition to live poker. With the influx of new highly skilled online pros into the live game, the terrible live game players are being bled dry faster, and there’s not new blood coming into the whole poker economy by giving online a try when they’d never try (or be able) to start with live poker.
So as the games go on, the bad players are getting pushed out, and the games are increasingly full of skilled online pros - so currently you’re witnessing a stage where poker will skew extremely young - but this is a temporary stage as it shakes out that the poker ecosystem is unsustainable. Too many good players bleeding too few bad players too quickly, with not enough new blood coming in to the system - it’s going to collapse within a year or two as a viable way of making a living for the majority of people currently doing it.