A bit of perspective

[Fr J Hackett]

A friend of mine (it's really not me) tells me that most betting shops have five or more ‘paying in' windows and just one 'paying out' window, where there is never a queue.

Long time since I have been in one but the premise is correct, you only have to see the respective queues at a racecourse bookie before and after the race.

 

[Mister E]

I went into a bookmakers once.

I needed a pen so borrowed one from there.

 

[LittleSister]

A long time ago, in a land far away, I used to repair and service fruit machines and juke boxes. (I'd almost forgotten it.)

Those electro-mechanical fruit machines had the odds built in, and are a physical manifestation of how (commercial) gambling in general works.

The machines were designed to pay out often, but only a percentage of the money put in (averaged over a period). They varied slightly, but all worked around a fairly standard percentage that I've now forgotten. They were also designed to make a lot of noise when paying out.

They work on the basis that the chances are, you will put more money in than you get out. You can occasionally end up with more than you put in. When they do, though, most people will then think that either they or the machine are on a winning streak, or at least now have more money to spare than they did, and put more money in, until they, too will have approached or passed the average, and put more money in than they got out.

The machines collected enough money to pay for the manufacture of the machine (not cheap), a rent to the pub or club hosting them, a decent profit for the firm who owned them, and my wages.

I guess for the punters they provided a bit of entertainment, or at least boredom relief, along with the hope of 'winning'.

 

[dunedin]

I suspect not one of the posters has ever seriously gambled, either winning or losing. So they are puritanical views of the uninformed that wish to censure people for their own good as they don't have the wit to run their own lives. There are countless ways in which people can ruin their lives gambling is just one are we to forbid all activities that get some people into a mess.

A life long gambler.

The gambling industry has management information systems. The key metric for most casinos is “cash drop” - ie how much the punters have lost. Everything they do is aimed at increasing the cash drop - ie increasing the punters losses.
It’s a mugs game - unless you are the casino or online gambling owner.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

The gambling industry has management information systems. The key metric for most casinos is “cash drop” - ie how much the punters have lost. Everything they do is aimed at increasing the cash drop - ie increasing the punters losses.
It’s a mugs game - unless you are the casino or online gambling owner.

Casinos and on line gambling are not the only formats and as every serious gambler knows that the odds are calculated to give the house an advantage.

 

[DownWest]

Local friend plays the horses. Small bets and follows form very closely. He wins enough for a holiday each year (as he puts it, he could go anyway..) So, like Fr.J he controls it.
Far too many do not, and it ruins their lives. Like the guy I refered to earlier. He ended up, after a very high life, relying on friends to help him out. They did that, knowing the loans would not be repaid.
But, he was consumed by the thrill.....

 

[lustyd]

An old boss of mine used to say "if you die in debt, you've made a profit". Nothing wrong with having some fun with your money.

 

[WindyWindyWindy]

When I was last in Blackpool you could gamble with a 2p stake. Don't think you'll get a lot of boating for that..

Where there are poor people there is a place for the rich to stand.

 

[LittleSister]

An old boss of mine used to say "if you die in debt, you've made a profit".
Nothing wrong with having some fun with your money.

Better still, with someone else's!

 

[Concerto]

Local friend plays the horses. Small bets and follows form very closely. He wins enough for a holiday each year (as he puts it, he could go anyway..) So, like Fr.J he controls it.
Far too many do not, and it ruins their lives. Like the guy I refered to earlier. He ended up, after a very high life, relying on friends to help him out. They did that, knowing the loans would not be repaid.
But, he was consumed by the thrill.....

Someone I know was married to a secret gambler. When she found out, they separated and divorced. She nearly got very little of what was left financily and had to borrow from her mum to buy him out of the house and take the mortgage on to keep a roof over her head.

Decades ago I went on the QE2 and chatting with a staff member, they stated the slot machines in the casino had different payout rates. Those closest to the casino bar had a 98% payout, so were constantly played by people for hours on end. The sound of these few machines paying out regularly encouraged others to start feeding the other machines which were guaranteed to consume their money.

 

[harvey38]

Life is a gamble, thankfully the odds have been stacked, generally, in my favour for fifty eight years

 

[johnalison]

The current trouble is that the purveyors of gambling have become very sophisticated. From the payout ruse mentioned above they have moved on to algorithms and strategies that hook players into gambling and video games in general. A similar approach was used in Deal or no Deal, when it was known that people would happily risk more money to avoid more imagined losses rather than settle for a limited gain.

 

[Stemar]

The current trouble is that the purveyors of gambling have become very sophisticated. From the payout ruse mentioned above they have moved on to algorithms and strategies that hook players into gambling and video games in general. A similar approach was used in Deal or no Deal, when it was known that people would happily risk more money to avoid more imagined losses rather than settle for a limited gain.

That feels to me a bit like your friendly local dope pusher mixing an addictive drug in with your relatively harmless hash, or a try it for free on heroin and cocaine, both of which are, I'm led to believe are common marketing strategies. Nice people...

 

[DoubleEnder]

You have it backwards. LIBS was laid back because sailing is a mature market that doesn't need to try. Sales event spending is inversely proportional to the desperation and/or greed of the sales people. At SIBS you can barely get them to acknowledge your existence*, let alone enter into sales talk - a clear sign that they have full books and don't need your money. With any luck, sailing will start to decline a bit and we'll see some effort again at some point.

*Mostly. There were two brands who were very engaged last year. One was an extremely niche performance cruising yacht at the upper end of the price spectrum who spoke to me for 30 minutes enthusiastically despite me openly saying I wouldn't buy one.

Really my point was that recreational boating, in aggregate, is a pretty small industry. Certainly at the YBW level, maybe not once you get to superyacht Levels.
Years ago, I worked briefly in a marine related retail store and one of the ‘big’ companies CEO came in for a chat, very nice, top guy. He told me that (admittedly at the time, 1990s) the entire leisure marine industry in the U.K. - boatbuilding, marinas! Clothing! Engines! Gear! Sails! Electronics! Insurance! Chandlery . . . .the whole lot added together made up a smaller percentage of the U.K.’s GDP than……………… the pet business.
and it does sort of make sense I think. It’s easy to have a little cat or dog, so many people can do it. But boats, not so easy or as ubiquitous at all.

Gambling is easy for people to do. It’s a big business. Boats are outside most people‘s consciousness. It’s a small business

 

[LittleSister]

“If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

(Douglas Adams, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe')

 

[AntarcticPilot]

The current trouble is that the purveyors of gambling have become very sophisticated. From the payout ruse mentioned above they have moved on to algorithms and strategies that hook players into gambling and video games in general. A similar approach was used in Deal or no Deal, when it was known that people would happily risk more money to avoid more imagined losses rather than settle for a limited gain.

The bottom line is that the only guaranteed winners are the owners of casinos etc. This is elementary probability theory; every single commercial gambling enterprise has a house percentage built in, so on average, the public lose and the house wins. "Systems" generally ignore the fact that individuals have far fewer resources than the house, so a sustained losing streak, which is more likely than a sustained winning streak because of the house percentage, will clean a gambler out, while a sustained winning streak won't clean the house out. That is, of course, assuming honest games! And a lot of "systems" forget the basic rule of probability, which is that it has no memory. If, for example, you're tossing a coin and throw 6 heads in a row, the odds of the next throw being heads are still 50-50. But we tend to believe that if you've just thrown 6 heads, it is more likely that you'll get tails next - but it isn't; probability has no memory.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

The bottom line is that the only guaranteed winners are the owners of casinos etc. This is elementary probability theory; every single commercial gambling enterprise has a house percentage built in, so on average, the public lose and the house wins. "Systems" generally ignore the fact that individuals have far fewer resources than the house, so a sustained losing streak, which is more likely than a sustained winning streak because of the house percentage, will clean a gambler out, while a sustained winning streak won't clean the house out. That is, of course, assuming honest games! And a lot of "systems" forget the basic rule of probability, which is that it has no memory. If, for example, you're tossing a coin and throw 6 heads in a row, the odds of the next throw being heads are still 50-50. But we tend to believe that if you've just thrown 6 heads, it is more likely that you'll get tails next - but it isn't; probability has no memory.

I will refer you to post #25