Bit depressing to think that there are people having their lives (and often the lives of those around them) ruined by gambling... Even more depressing is the fact that there are companies freely exploiting the previous fact. What a time to be alive...

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I just hope to the universe my nephews are not drawn into this.

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tbf, the fact that promoting this is legal in the first place angers me

The only gambling I do is buying lottery tickets when I'm having the worst urges to kill myself. A little trick to wait just a bit longer. "You can wait until you get the results, it's only couple days", and then the worst urge manages to pass in that time. It's pretty pathetic

Never once in my life have I felt the appeal of gambling.

All I needed to learn is that statistically, the house comes out ahead, and that was that.

A friend once insisted on dragging me out to a casino, and I came up with a hare-brained plan for blackjack (since it has the best odds of victory). I decided to double my bet every time until I won. But only up to as much money as I was willing to lose, because there's a low chance for this strategy to go poorly very quickly.

I made enough money to pay for the entire trip, and then I never gambled again for the rest of my life. So that's my story of how I came out ahead.

I've gambled twice in my life. The first time was sitting in a gas station casino because my buddy's car overheated on the pass. Put $20 into a keno machine, lost about half of it, realized I could have gotten several beers instead. Got annoyed with myself and cashed out.

The second time was in Vegas. Same buddy gave me a massive hit on a vape pen and dragged me over to a blackjack table. He dumped some chips in front of me things happened, the table was a lot of fun to look at, the dealer cleared her throat in a really annoyed way because I was grooving on the pattern on the back of the cards instead of playing. I handed the chips back to my buddy and told the entire casino I was too high for this shit.

I guess I don't have the gene. I've got an addictive personality in general and that's been fun to deal with, but I'm glad it doesn't extend to gambling.

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Can't relate.

I probably dont have the gene, but I dont feel cool for not clicking an ad. What I mostly feel is rage that the promotions are so obviously geared towards getting the potentially addicted to try it by offering $100's of free (bonus) bets.

And at the end they have the audacity to mention a helpline.

I was down in winter once and decided I'd try out the whole gambling thing. Put 50 into some website and lost it all on a shit game.

Why do people get addicted to that? I experienced no joy and the outcome was exactly what I expected.

I am this person. How anyone could be interested is beyond me.

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I've had exactly one gambling experience in my life. I went with some friends to a casino in Louisiana and I tried a slot machine. I stuck my credit card in the slot, was debited $5, pushed the "lever" button, and won exactly bupkis. I don't know what the appeal is but I imagine it involves winning occasionally. I'm going to stick with my 0.000 batting average and be happy.

I bet I dont have this gene

If you know the basics of probability theory, you can calculate the expected value in most of the games. For roulette with two zeros, the expected value of your win is 95% of your bet, so it doesn't make any sense.

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. So 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 absolutely 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. I'm just not a gambler. One of the other kids from that same game went on to owe someone else £300 by the time we left school.

I've been to casinos a couple of times but took some good advice with me. Think about how much you'd be happy to spend on a night out. If you were going to an arena concert, or the theatre, or a flash sit-down meal, how much would you pay for the night? Think about a casino in the same way. You take a set amount of money which you're going to 'spend' on entertainment. Once you've lost all of that, you leave the casino. If you find youself up on the night, hurrah.

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