Why do we gamble? I know this question has been asked a million times, and there have been a million answers. Make that one million and one, as I am going to give it a shot. Certainly in life, we all have to gamble, as life is one long contest with luck, circumstance, and our eventual big loss. Life has a house edge to it, certainly, that grinds away at us, and even those who have had the best of times cannot escape the worst of times when they must say sayonara to the world. Of course, those who have had rotten lives because of chance or circumstance might look upon the fateful last moment as a blessing: I am so happy to be out of here!
Psychology of Gambling: Reasons for Gambling
Ok, so we all understand that slot deposit pulsa offers you the chance of winning money or prizes, but have you considered some of the other reasons for gambling? A look into the psychology of gambling offers insight into that question.
I think real life is a combination of the fated and the decided. You are fated to die. The generation that will never die has not yet been born. You are fated to get old despite wrinkle creams and facelifts that often cause people to look as if someone is trying to rip the skin right off their skulls. I look in the mirror, and I see a guy with gray hair who is closer to 70 than to 40. Is that really me now?
The other day in the bagel shop the girl behind the counter asked me if I got the senior citizen discount. My wife was asked, that very night, in our small village theater if she got the senior discount for the movies. We both said no as if that would mean that fate was not hastening us toward senior Ville—the place from which no one returns!
Most of life—at least in America, for just about all Americans—has to do with the decisions we make and the aftermath of those decisions. Not every decision is going to be a good one. Some of them explode in our faces, and we have to make more decisions to handle the poor decisions that went kea-boom. Even little kids make decisions that have real and long-term consequences. That fi rest-grader goofing off when the teacher is instructing in math doesn’t realize that his fun today will limit what he can do with his tomorrows. If he goofs off throughout his school career, his prospects will be severely limited, and rail as he might against the “system,” or “society,” this person has created his dismal situation, and only he can uncreate it.
We gamble in life because we must gamble—there is no other choice. Not gambling in life is actually gambling that doing nothing will have a better outcome than doing something. We have to decide what schools to go to or whether to go to school at all; whether we should study or forget about studies; whom we should marry or whether to marry at all. Each and every decision opens some doors and closes other doors. No decision is without some consequence. And that is exactly what we d
Let’s say we know, for example, that the $1 slot machines pay back 92 percent of all the money put in them. We know if we were to play those $1 machines forever we’d be behind by about 8 percent of all the money we put through the machine. Our gamble, a very simple gamble, is that the machine does not pay back the money smoothly. It is volatile. It is cold more often than hot, but when it gets hot you can hit some big money. Our gamble is that it will hit for us in the short time we are playing it
Still, most of the time it won’t. We accept that fate. But we have decided that the gamble is worth the intermittent thrill of a big win—or any win—because that win goes against long-term fate. We know we are bucking the house edge. We know the casino will win in the end—against almost every single casino gambler out there. But we gamble we can change that fate, at least for ourselves, at least for tonight. And sometimes it happens.
Helpful Hint:
My mentor, the late Captain of craps, whose ideas I will discuss in the craps section of this book, called casino gambling a “manageable thrill,” because the risks a typical casino gambler takes will not destroy him but will get that adrenaline fly owing.
It doesn’t have the interminable “unknowable’s” of whether you and Jane will be married happily ever after. It isn’t like the war against fate in real life, in which we have no possibility of winning and we all know it. The war against fate in the casino gives us a lot more power than we have in real life because occasionally we do indeed cheat death. And that’s why 26 percent of the adult population in America loves to gamble!
