Oh, no, I don’t care, my first comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
In seriousness, someone who is triggered by a free drawing is very easily triggered and I don’t think we need to avoid these free lotteries just for them. If you want to self exclude from the million dollar free roll, be my guest I guess.
That said I would argue that any risk-free gambling is not actually gambling but I’m not suggesting that we send the problem gamblers a bunch of free sports bets and freeroll tickets. There’s a reason they use that “gambling” to promote the real gambling.
I mean i could see some gambling addict(s) winning $100 and falling off the wagon, ultimately ruining their life. And I’m ok with that. Vaccination is important.
I could be wrong but I don’t think anyone was suggesting we get rid of the lottery only that we don’t LOL at the people who are struggling with addiction.
Saying you are ok with someone ruining their life just seems insane to me and comes from a place of extreme privilege. Must be nice to be better than those other people. I bet most of them are waiters or waitresses anyways.
unfortunately a forum full of poker players having 0 sympathy towards gambling addicts is the least surprising thing ever. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”
So that invalidates the ad hominem you just threw out there?
People in general don’t give a shit about addicts. UP is nothing special, and people are obviously going to focus on how there’s a lot more benefit than harm to these types of programs.
Yeah that was the point of even discussing it. We should be able to do two things at once. Be sympathetic to addicts AND realize that there’s a lot more benefit than harm to these types of programs.
a huge portion of this forum has a net worth 5/6/7 figures higher than it otherwise would be because of poker. the fact that they aren’t still drawing a salary from it in 2021 is besides the point - but if you wanted to win on semantics then congrats.
and there is a drinking thread on here and on 2p2 that proves that people do in fact “give a shit” about addicts.
This is a generally excellent observation, but of course is useless in this case because as caffeine pointed out, extremely few people in this forum rely on significant poker income. And it seems like you understand that too, so it seems like a very weird spot to try to use this.
It is not too surprising that a bunch of poker players have little sympathy gambling addicts, but the reason you gave is not the reason why.
And we had this discussion when the dude who was run off/left was playing in home games a year ago, but if you’re playing poker for actual money and are the pro, you’re usually one of the least successful people at the table. Your job is to not be a douche to rich whales. You don’t see many gambling addicts playing poker. It’s so slow compared to slots or other table games. The limits are usually lower. Other people are watching your every move.
Basically no one has shit on people with gambling addictions, it’s just a dumb story with a circumstance that maybe triggered a handful of people then some posters are absolutely running away with it.
The experiences/traumas of everyday life trigger people. We should be mindful of this, but not project our insecurities or biases onto small scale events.
I’m not sure how anyone who has made a living from poker for any period of time could have a blind spot for problem gamblers. Where did this theoretical person think the money came from?
I genuinely haven’t seen many “problems gamblers” at poker tables over the years. A handful at most over thousands of hours. Now, that’s on my definition of something like “playing with money they can’t afford to lose.” Might my experienced be somewhat abnormal only playing in canada/Vegas? Perhaps, but you always see the sad shit in slots/table games.
The local casino is by where I worked and I’d see so many people I knew were having financial trouble there late at night at a machine, but never in the poker room.
Well, that’s an improvement. I still don’t think that’s it.
I think the real reason is a type of privilege. Most of the people here are lucky to be wired differently from gambling addicts. We’ve gambled (often very profitably) and when we lose we’re wealthy enough that it doesn’t make dent. It hard to understand something ruining someone else’s life when all it has done is enhance yours (and I don’t mean because of the money won, I just mean the general enjoyment of the activity).