Gambling is stupid. Gambling online is even stupider.
I have touched on gambling time and time again. It is stupid and very popular among the poor. The image that the "gaming industry" likes to project is that of sophisticated wealthy people, dressed like James Bond, in a dinner jacket, saying "Pass the shoe!" to Blowfeldt, before he takes him to the cleaners.
The reality is, the "high rollers" are, in many instances, merely laundering money. Buy $1M of chips, gamble away $100,000 of it, get a free room and meal (and hooker) and then cash out the rest as gambling "winnings" which you pay taxes on - and are now legally yours. At least that is the way it used to be done.
But the bulk of "players" are middle-class or lower - often people who have addictive personalities - cigarettes, alcohol, drugs - you name it. Gambling is just another vice they have. And oddly enough, I know people who are very religious who are also gamblers. You'd think that would cause some sort of cognitive dissonance, but when they win, they just assume God loves them, and when they lose, that God is pissed-off. The original prosperity theology.
A reader chastised me for those postings on gambling - they argued that from an economic standpoint, it was a fair trade. The gambler spends money on a gambling game, and gets "entertainment value" in return. It is not different than buying a ticket to see a movie or Broadway show. And there may be a nugget of truth to that. I have friends who make annual pilgrimages to Vegas with their friends. They go, they spend money, they lose money at the slots, they see a show, have a buffet, get shitfaced drunk, and then fly home. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas - right? It is almost their trademark. Oh, wait, it is!
But what about not going to Vegas or even Atlantic City, or the Poconos or the Mohegan Sun or the Catskills or the gambling boat or.... whatever gambling outlet is within 30 minutes of your home (and there is on, 30 minutes from your home)? Why not gamble online? After all, everything else has gone online, right?
Well, I think that in addition to the utter stupidity of playing with your wealth as if it was a toy and not your actual freedom, there are heightened levels of stupidity added on. To begin with, whatever "entertainment" experience might occur in Las Vegas is utterly lacking in an online gambling one. Online "gaming" reduces gambling to the Skinner box that gambling ultimately is - people pushing levers and hoping to get a food pellet, with the incidence of "winning" made ever more remote.
Online gambling is just giving up and giving in to your obsessive-compulsive addictive personality. It is like just saying, "Well, I used to drink a bit, but then I decided to say fuck it all and just start every day with a quart of Vodka and let it go downhill from there, until I wake up in the gutter coated with vomit!" I mean, that does cut to the chase, but it isn't necessarily an enjoyable experience.
In gambling, the house always wins - otherwise they's go broke. So statistically, if you gamble consistently, you end up "winning" back 90 cents for every dollar you wager. So you wager a dollar, you end up with 90 cents. You wager 90 cents, you end up with 81 cents - and so on and so forth. Maybe you never completly run out of money this way, but you leave with less than you came in with.
Yes, statically there will be some winners who make more than they wager. But in order to do that, you have to get lucky, win, and then walk away and never gamble again. If you go back to the well to try your luck again, odds are, you will lose. Inevitably, your wins and losses zero out, just like flipping a coin. You can't predict whether it will be a heads or tails based on how many heads or tails you previously flipped (you are not "due" for a heads after flipping five tails - the odds are always 50/50. They call this the "gambler's fallacy" - interesting term, no?). But, over time, if you flip a penny 100 times, your results will center towards that 50/50 mark.
But then there is trust. If I go to a casino and win $100, I expect to be able to cash out $100 and walk away. Maybe the casino won't be happy about it, but they will pay. If I win too consistently, they will cash me out and ask me to leave as they will suspect I am cheating somehow (e.g., card counting) and the house always wins - often by throwing out winners. Of course, sometimes you can "win" and they still will refuse to pay out - but that's mechanical error, not fraud ( you can't win $42M on a machine with a max payout of $6500).
But an online casino? What obligation do they have to pay you at all? If they are located overseas, it would be nearly impossible to sue them and chances are, it would cost more than you are owed. Even if you could find a lawyer to take the case and you could track down the people, their judiciary system would probably rule in their favor. I've seen firsthand how this works.
Of course, the online casinos - like any good casino - touts big winners (real or not, we don't know) by showing smiling people holding big checks with accompanying text saying, "I won!!" Who knows? They might even have paid out a few people. Or maybe all of them - even a "legit" online casino would still make money - and the players would all lose money. So they don't even have to cheat.
So gambling online is stupid to the nth power. And yet, I get ads online all the time for online casinos. Somebody is playing them, no doubt. But in a way, they are not much different than online gaming these days, where video games are provided with "loot boxes" and avatars and flair and weapons you can buy with online money which can be won in the game or bought using real money. Unlike a casino, however, online money in a video game usually can't be exchanged back into cash.
So why would anyone do it?
I think I already answered that question. Human beings are just a bundle of bad behaviors - compulsive, obsessive, bad behaviors. Gambling is just one of the least satisfying and costly of them, say, compared to sex, drinking, drugs, over-eating, or driving too fast. The powers-that-be manipulate us using our compulsive behaviors and snare us into a life of servitude. How many people do you know complain about how "unfair" life is, and how they are underpaid and how rent costs too much - but say this while exhaling bong smoke? They fail to make the connection.
I know I did. Yes, I spent my youth doing drugs and drinking and wasting money - and then complaining that life was "unfair". I gave up that lifestyle for a decade - just a decade - and ended up a millionaire. In ten years. I owe a lot to "that guy" who was me, age 30-40 who did all the heavy lifting in my life. Now I am retired and can indulge in all my compulsive behaviors - well, at least some of them. There is still the issue of outliving your money - right?
Some are lucky and see this early on - they work hard and save money in their 20's and by age 30 are pretty well set. Others, well, they continue down the road of self-indulgence and end up broke and bitter in their 50's - and see no way out. And that sucks, but then again, it is a trap, carefully laid, and when they put their foot in it, they mocked me for not trying it.
And I am sure there are a host of voices out there who would say that online gambling is a good deal - which is why I have comments disabled. The "gaming industry" would SPAM my comments box with cheery comments about how much they won at online gambling, along with a helpful URL to their gaming site.
The above graphic is from "Chumbo Casino" which advertises heavily on the Internet. "Chumbo?" What sort of name is that? It is one letter off from "Chump-o" or "Dumbo" and maybe that is the point they are leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that only the most dense would fail to see. It is akin to these scam e-mails you receive which are full of typos. If you can't see that an e-mail from "McDonald" saying you won a Burger King gift card is fake, well, then they have you.
UPDATE: It is hard to research these folks. The Chump-O casino is apparently out of Malta (good luck, there!) and the only "reviews" I can find are ones that say, "This casino is no good, try this other casino instead!" Yes, people are that stupid - look around you.
The one thing I have come to realize with age is that people are a lot dumber than I thought they could ever be.
