I put down a few bucks on the horses on the first Saturday in May, but it seems like online sports betting is just specifically designed to screw people out of all their money as fast as possible.
I guess…change my mind? Or don’t.
Edit: I wasn’t asking anyone to convince me to gamble, I was curious who the hell actually throws money in a black hole and wanted to hear their perspective. Thanks for the downvotes.
All gambling is designed to screw people out of their money as fast as possible.
Eh. The big state lotteries are certainly scams, but in most cases they aren’t going for “as fast as possible”, but “keep it going by regularly taking small amounts for a long time, from as many people as possible”.
It’s actually a similar to disease r-values vs. fatality rates. If the gambling scheme takes too much profit, it burns out. It can’t give up the promise of winning faster than stories of loss accumulate. I’m sure casinos have hired economists and statisticians to find the optimum percentage payout for slots in Vegas to keep people pounding the SPIN button like rats hitting a feeder bar in a lab.
Look, I know you’ll not want to hear this, but it’s not actually about screwing people as fast as possible at all. I have family in Vegas and used to live close to the Nevada border, with a few card game dealer neighbors. Casinos, to me, are where retirees throw away money to subsidize my buffet trip. I don’t understand people that play slots. In 2003 I won $13 at my second pull at some slots and never touched one again.
But casinos are truly evil in that they tease you perfectly. You win just enough to keep you hooked, but you do win. People winning keeps the dream of you winning going. They gladly comp you drinks and used to comp shit food which feels like a win. But casinos, at least, are not systematically invulnerable. May partner and I spent maybe 4 hours going between 4 or 5 casinos playing roulette once because she had never been to the Strip. We started with $20 I planned to lose, got a few comped drinks at Slots-o-Fun, never made some huge win but my partner and I had a fun time for less than the price of a movie in terms of value/time.
But, I’m also not addicted, and I never bet more than I plan to lose.
Hell no. I don’t do gambling and I don’t care about sports.
App based sports betting is explicitly designed to create and reinforce gambling addictions via instant availability and hyper specific betting. Avoid that shit like cigarettes.
I don’t gamble with money, only with lives.
Seriously though, I don’t get the allure of sports betting. Or slot machines — which are just very expensive, very boring video games. You might win a couple of bucks, but the house just takes it right back. I’d rather put the same money into a pinball machine. It would take me longer to lose it and I’d have more fun and challenge.
That said, I thought the vote count looked skewed so I threw an upvote because I don’t think the discussion in and off itself is bad. But no, I can’t relate and don’t care to change anyone’s mind.
That said, I thought the vote count looked skewed so I threw an upvote because I don’t think the discussion in and off itself is bad. But no, I can’t relate and don’t care to change anyone’s mind.
Yeah, maybe that’s my bad. I think sports betting apps are one of the worst things ever done with a smartphone, so “change my mind” was more so asking anyone who is into these apps to explain why they’re into it. I didn’t expect anyone to take that literally and downvote in…disgust? disagreement? I dunno. Lesson learned that lemmy is still social media.
Seems like an efficient way to take the fun out of watching sports to me personally. The whole sportsbook thing is less of a novelty to people like me from the UK though; we’ve already been through the cycle of the adverts becoming so obnoxious that there is a consumer backlash and regulation ends up getting tightened again.
You’re right,
gambling is to screw you out of your money.
I’d recommend to steer clear of it.Also the prediction market stuff,
it’s the latest new gambling hype thing,
since they can use loopholes to bypass gambling laws.No, I dont and won’t use them. The worst part about these apps is that I now question the legitimacy of sports. I am not confident that the athletes are able to resist the temptation to throw a game.
Yeah, sports betting has been an issue in sports for thousands of years (chariot racing in Rome was pretty wild in a lot of ways).
Well, since I really don’t care about any sports … no.
I don’t find gambling interesting in any way, and I rarely follow any sports at all so I guess it’s not a surprise that I don’t even know the sites you just mentioned.
Betting is like burning money and highly addictive.
I don’t, but I have a friend who does, or at least, he has. He said he made a couple bucks, but when I pressed, he said he’s lost more than he’s won.
My stepmother is a gambler, and has a pretty good tip (strategy) for gambling responsibly. I would say “don’t” but some people are going to. So what she does, she sets aside a budget to gamble with, and that goes in one pocket. All winnings go to another pocket. When she runs out of the first amount, she never dips into the winnings. The initial amount is the value she placed on the fun she had, however long it lasted. She does not spend any more than that. If you have some self control, you can do it, too.
I don’t like gambling. I’m good at math and I know the house always wins. I don’t care about casino games much (though, Blackjack is fun with friends with chips, no money involved). I do play video games though. And for the first time in over a decade, I just preordered a game. Final Fantasy 7 remake for Xbox. It’s been out for 5 years on PlayStation, so it’s not “new.” Plus, I played the original when it was brand new in 1997, and the preorder includes that. And I’ve actually been playing it. $40. Not bad. I think my stepmother takes $50 or $100 to the casino. Mostly I buy games on sale. I recently got the new Harry Potter game and the newest iteration of Persona 5 for about $10 each. Hogwarts Legacy on Xbox, Persona 5 Royal on Switch. And I got Mario Kart 8 for the Switch for my wife. $50. So, $110 on gaming in the last month… but those games will last me quite a while, and I can replay them whenever I want. I’ve probably paid $100 into Cyberpunk 2077, between the Steam version, the Xbox version, the DLC for Xbox, and then the DLC for Steam, when it came to Mac. Got a few sales in there. But I have a few hundred hours into that game. So, video gaming is the greater value, but for people not that much older than me (I’m younger Gen X), it’s not even a consideration. They would rather gamble with real money than play a $5 casino game on a Switch or iPhone (there may even be cheaper ones, just throwing out a number).
I did, put $20 in to bet on the superbowl one year and won. I made a bunch of NBA bets until the end of the season and won a lot of them as well. I made $300 and took $200 out. I played some more with the $100, went up and down but ultimately lost it. Still overall gain of $180 was fine by me! My friends all love to use it as well, but they are way more into sports than I am. They do the whole fantasy leagues and stuff.
I have no issue with gambling, but if you are not a responsible person you should absolutely stay away. I grew up playing poker with friends so thats why I always enjoyed it.
Seeing all the comments I feel like I am completely different from everyone else here lol.
Yeah - I don’t generally gamble outside of 1 day a year, plus raffles don’t count and I go in for them once in a while. I’m up maybe $800 over my lifetime.
I would bet you $5 that if i asked about crypto, a much larger percentage of people here would tell me about how they made some money and it’s certainly not gambling.
I don’t do any betting at all. If anything, you need to decode sports using esoteric methods (I like gematria, as it uses mathematics).
Setting up a website, paying for an admin, bandwidth only to hand money to you makes no sense.
It’s specifically designed to give you the rush of gambling. Dream about winning big, the excitement of doing your analysis deciding who to bet on, you bouncing on your couch when you’re watching, the rush when you get it right.
You would not expect me to build a rollercoaster and then give you money to ride on it?
Well, online sports betting is specifically designed to screw people out of all their money as fast as possible.
