Gambling Addiction

I agree, however, the vast majority of them did their big damage somewhere else as far as I could tell. They came to poker because they could come close to breaking even there, but would be on the phone with their bookie, playing pai gow, etc.

I amended it to the suburb casino was nothing but boring middle class white ppl and the downtown one was honestly too depressing to make the journey sometimes.

The average stack at an average 1/2 game at the ā€œgoodā€ casino was usually ~500+ at most times with very few casuals.
The average stack at the downtown casino would sometimes be ~$70.

As caffeine says, find me a poker player with a gambling addiction and their real losses are in the pits.

I wasnā€™t backpack/head phones guy but I donā€™t think I ever interacted with other players at a casino enough to know what their personal finances were like.

And if you play online, there is no way to know. So even though it is true that one is undoubtedly encountering lots of problem gamblers when logging many hours of poker, it easy to not actually see the effects of those problems. Very easy.

Playing with a gambling addict by itself is not enough to appreciate the devastating effects of gambling addiction and develop empathy for affected individuals. You actually have to see those devastating effects. And those (normally) occur away from the table.

During the period when online poker was its very best they let people deposit with credit cards lol. Iā€™m sure no lives were ruined right?

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You think thatā€™s stopped? Credit cards probably still account for 90%+ of online gambling deposits.
The ā€œlegalā€ province run gambling site at least requires your SSIN, and for you to set both time and financial limits before depositing.

Right now most of my villains online are from eastern Europe. A ton of Romanian players now, more than anywhere else.

It might be different where I did most of my playing. Casino games are illegal in Israel. So is Poker, but there are countless places to play live poker while playing live casino will require going to some very shady places.

I played for years in a home game where a lot of rich people took their extremely comfortable lives and turned them into very uncomfortable ones. They might not be broke and homeless, but Iā€™ve seen many marriages fall apart, jobs lost etc.

Met/Knew a couple GA members through my 20+ years in LV. Every single one of them would ask out of any sort of lottery or game of chance. Including the Vax lottery.
Reason being: As soon as there was a chance to win something, the ā€œjuiceā€ part of the brain got stimulated. And once it got started, cravings came. Now that didnā€™t mean they would go gamble their house right away. But why risk that hit of adrenaline.

Solution is of course to give vaxxed people the option to join the lottery or opt out of it.

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It wasnā€™t generally true for online poker sites during my time (2009-BF), at least not that I was aware of. But Iā€™m pretty sure youā€™re helping me make my point. The money from advantage gambling comes from losing gamblers. The most important losing gamblers usually have a pretty serious problem or are just insanely richā€¦ and many of those people are also problem gamblers who go broke multiple times in their lives despite being very well compensated.

If you have a drive to self destruct and you have an astronomical amount of money one of the only viable ways to really be self destructive is to gamble or consume substances to insane excess. Usually these people do both.

This isnā€™t true, but also I donā€™t see what thatā€™s an argument for.

Addiction: continuing an activity in the face of negative consequences. Drinking, smoking, gambling, drinking, eating, heroin, coke, meth, pot . . .

Agree to disagree I guess.

Curious for @Smacc_25 and other bits. Not trying to be mean here, Iā€™m really not. But why does the Uk seem more naive with gambling culture? Is it just because itā€™s newer?

A couple of months ago I was reading an article on The Athletic. There was a UK company that let you buy/sell stocks of footballers like they were a commodity. They even offered dividends. This site went out of business early this year due to being a pyramid scheme. Many people lost a lot of money. But it seems like such an obvious scam and I read so many unfortunate comments on how people got swindled.
Not trying to blame the victims, the site and the government for not shutting them down are 100% to blame. But when I listen to Uk sources on gambling there seems to be more of an expectation of winning.

Can you explain nieve here, thanks.

People have been gambling in the UK for 1,000 of years as far as I know.

More than in the US the UK protects its gambling companies with vigor, I canā€™t speak to that incident, the gambler here in general will have little chance against the Gaming industry etc.

I canā€™t remember if it was you specifically or one of the other UK posters, but the newness of the pervasive presence of gambling stops in the UK has been brought up here before. It is a new ā€œgrowthā€ industry.

The USA was certainly up there in bets/maths and various ways to gain an edge, all steaming from a lack of SS services and living in a country with hyper capitalists Iā€™d presume.

Gambling here is also fairly frowned apon and never really spoke about between familys and friends, itā€™s the unspoken vice, only recently has more exposure been given due to the Internet were as before gambling was all done by men in Bookmakers/Snooker Halls, Slots, casinos wre the go to, bingoā€™s only recently got slot machines and have taken over a lot of the Bookmakers slot profits.

Noā€¦ Weā€™ve suffered many a decade where gambling was rifeā€¦ The 60ā€™s was one of them and its why nowadays people my grans age never speaks of the Casinos that popped up in our local areas.

They got banned

For instance these were on every street corner in Glasgow at tiā€™s time.

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Was going to post the same. Seems like every table Iā€™ve ever played had one or two true addicts.

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I dunno what you mean by naive (i would charactirize the views shown here on gambling addiction and poker as naive), but gambling feels much more prominent in the UK than in the US to me. Maybe this will change now with the introduction of online sports betting in the US.

Every street in UK cities Iā€™ve walked on had at least one bookie shop.

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Iā€™m mostly referring to this scenario:

Much less in depth BBC article for those who donā€™t have an account:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/business-56401707.amp

Idk, I just couldnā€™t imagine something like that flying in NA? Itā€™s like topshot but 100% a scam vs just mostly a scam.
This obviously isnā€™t to say ppl in NA arenā€™t dumb or donā€™t get scammed. That is the opposite of true. Just with betting the UK comments I read seem more rosy.

Thereā€™s poker clubs all over this island too, the police came in the place I went once or twice, as long as no drink was being consumed we were fine, or drinking and no games, the owners did have to get a secure door though to satisfy them.

Just before the pandemic there was around 5 or 6 bookmakers to every high Street and thatā€™s no joke.

The Campaign for Fairer Gambling has calculated that there is now one bookmaker for around every 2458 adults, a total of 205, in the city.3 Mar 2014
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk ā€ŗ 1ā€¦
Glasgow has most bookies shops of anywhere in Britain | Glasgow Times

Population? 598,830

Edit: There is very few bookmakers left open here atm now and are closed for good now after the pandemic. Maybe 1/5 left

I think Iā€™ve seen them before advertised on someoneā€™s football App or someone mentioned it to me in the Cab, I just palmed it away like most football betting thatā€™s not from a player of the team. :sweat_smile: