Family Members With Gambling Addiction.?
Question by Knowledge is Power: Family Members with Gambling Addiction.?
I have at least 3 family members with a gambling addiction. They believe that it is possible to win big. They have been going for the past couple of years and I do not know when they will stop. Many of them live with other family members and actually have decent paying jobs. One of those people is my mom and it’s sad to see her go there and have high hopes. She does not see the big picture and it really makes me angry to see her like that because she is poor and can not afford to go. I wish casinos were illegal because they do more harm than good to the people that go. Casinos are not fair and only cause people to become addicts. I do not know what to do for my mom and I can not help her see the logic behind it. I am a math person and try to tell them that their chances of winning is slim and that they will lose more than they win overtime. Casinos should be banned or they should have a better pay out. I know it is their choice to go but the Casino is set up so that people believe they will win and they do not care if you lose your home or break up your family. What would you do? How do you feel about Casinos?
I believe the casino does try to trick people with their flashy lights and incentives to keep addicts coming back. I my opinion I feel there is a limited amount of people that go to the casino for entertainment. The main reason people go is to win and win big which is not the case. Only people that have money to spare and spend can say it entertainment because no reasonable or logical person will keep going because their chances of winning is slim and who would say losing money is fun. NOT I.
Best answer:
Answer by Bru
That’s a tough situation. You’re best bet is to try and reason with them, and try to get them professional help. Hotlines or groups could do them wonders. Or try explaining things to them, like slot payouts. Some slots say “98% payouts”, now this doesnt mean that the machines pay out 98% of the time. Over thousands and thousands of spins they will pay out 98 out of every 100 coins (credits) played.
But in defense of casinos, they are not trying to trick anyone. All payouts and odds are readily accessible. They can be a great source of entertainment to people with self-control. I know there are lots of people that either can’t or don’t exercise self-control, but there are many many programs for those people.
EDIT: Fair enough, but let me put it to you this way. On a Friday night you decide to go to a movie for instance. $ 10 admission (if you’re lucky), $ 10 for popcorn, candy etc (again…if you’re lucky and by yourself). Ok, so now for an hour and a half on entertainment, you have spent $ 20. Personally, I choose to take that $ 20 and go spend it at the casino. I am in no way a wealthy person. I’m a poor graduate student. I have just as much, if not more fun than I would at a movie. 90% of the time I lose that $ 20 (sometimes it takes 20 minutes, sometimes 4 hours), but I wasn’t going to get it back by going to the movies either.
Now as for the “trickery”, yes casinos make money, yes they are excellent at marketing, and without a doubt they will try and make money off of the fact that people are generally greedy (the whole something for nothing deal), but I stand by the point that they make EVERYTHING available to people. Odds, payouts, and even strategies. They encourage you to make the correct decisions and take home as much, or lose as little money as possible. But what it boils down to is that they are a business. Movie theaters wouldn’t stay open for long either if they dropped the prices of their admissions to almost nothing, or let you watch movies for free all the time.
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2 Responses to Family Members With Gambling Addiction.?
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your right in that casinos are great at marketing!!!! they do make you think the odds are better than they are!
not sure what games your family has a tendency towards- if they blow their money at slots thats ALOT worse than thinking they can make a fortune at blackjack or poker
Even so – your still favored to LOSE , maybe not poker but the amount of people that have the talent and bankroll to be successful is alot smaller than the number of people who try!
Unfortunately casinos do come down to free will – you SHOULDN’T outlaw something just because some people do not know their limits!
its unfair to everybody else, depending on the games your family plays they either need a good math teacher ….lol or they need some responsibility for their actions and not blow more than they can afford to!
Good Luck:)
*****edit – ya bru is right – casinos do post all odds for the games they offer, they dont try to cheat you at all , they really don’t deny that your favored to lose, they just make you think it COULD be you that defies the odds
i actually DISAGREE with you in that there are MILLIONS of people who are willing to spend money gambling as entertainment *(not me)
of course they want to win BIG, as NO ONE plays saying ” I hope I lose” BUT For A LOT of the general public who gambles only on occasion, they gamble more because the night out with friends is an “event” in itself. They are not really trying to break the bank and get rich, this is why most people know when to quit.
People who only see gambling as a game for profit are the people most likely to become addicted and think its possible to earn a living as a gambler!
I earned a living gambling for about 4 years. I played only poker. I think maybe your family needs to learn about poker and probability and it will make them want less to put money on all the bad bets a casino offers. I used to gamble on all kinds of games but now I don’t even want to take any of their crappy bets. The trick to winning at poker is to evaluate your hand accurately and only take the good bets, fold the bad ones. If you can do that pretty well you will see that in the casino they offer ONLY bad bets. You can pick between bad bets and worse bets.
Poker is different because you are not playing against the casino, you are playing against the other players and it is a game of skill. In addition to knowing what your hand is worth, it is important to correctly assess the skill of your opponents and play against the ones who are playing worse than you. If you don’t see your opponents making mistakes then you should find worse ones. If you see opponents making mistake after mistake and you know how to capitalize on their errors then you are totally at the right game. Like I said, I made a living at poker for about 4 years but I will tell you, it is not easy. I was a National Merit Scholar, got a 4.0 in college, and studied poker for a couple years before I started. End result is that my understanding of poker is thorough and scientific, and I have a lot of experience. Many players make it big with a lot less knowledge, but they will go broke too. I’ve never gone broke, because I understand the most important part of poker which is bankroll management.
Try to get your family members into poker, if they understand it well they will make money and not want to play the bad casino games. And even if they are just still gambling they will probably find that they get more bang for their gambling buck at poker.