I'm curious what hooks people with gambling. Trying to prevent exposure feels like security through obscurity.
To me gambling is boring but that's not helpful for people vulnerable to its hooks.
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I was in Chess Club at school (I know, I know, quite the jock!). We played chess. Then we got bored of chess and played backgammon. And backgammon without a bet is dull, so we started gambling. Then gambling became the point of playing. Then we moved on to poker.
I remember one poker hand. The deck was made up of about five different packs of cards. Jokers, black twos, one-eyed jacks, bedside queens, and suicide kings were all wild. I ended up with a hand of five aces. Two were real aces, three were wild cards. I had to raise. I mean, how can you not raise with five aces? What is the point of playing poker if you don’t raise with five aces?
Sadly, two other people also had five aces and one of them had three real aces and only two wild cards so they won the hand.
I lost £20 on that single hand and hated every single moment of playing it because somehow I knew, deep down, that I was going to lose. That was a lot of money for me back then and there were other, far better things I could have dropped it on - LPs were about £5 back then, video games £10.
But, it was a great early lesson on the ‘gotta keep going’ mindset of the gambler combined with the certainty that I was going to lose my money. I’m glad it happened, despite the short term remorse I felt immediately afterwards.
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Advertising gambling should be illegal
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Fuck all celebrities and athletes that promote their fans into harmful behavior. It s not like you don't know what you're doing. You know, you just don't care because someone is dangling money in front of your eyes
Age checks to "protect the children" from porno, nothing done for gambling.
Sinful and silly, but their parents are probably the same so what guidance could they have besides the wrong kind.
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