Before reading the text discuss the following questions.

· What forms of gambling are popular in our country?

· Are there any restrictions on gambling?

· “To be on the wire is life – the rest is waiting” (Karl Wallenda, high wire artist)

Are We Gamblers?

We all take risks every day of our lives. Driving to work, catching an aeroplane, even crossing the road. These sorts of risk are qualified by actuaries and covered by insurance policies. The insurance company, working on the past record of many hundreds of thousands of instances, calculates the probability of a particular accident befalling the individual seeking cover and sets the premium for the policy accordingly, plus a healthy margin to take care of its operating costs and profits. Exactly as the casinos do. But whereas most prudent people would take out an insurance policy, as a basic part of their game-plan for living, gamblers choose to take a wholly unnecessary and avoidable risk. Seeking risk for its own sake, as a diversion.

Part of the attraction, I feel sure, is the physical sensations offered. Consider simply the case of someone like you or me, planning to spend a night out at the casino. First comes the pleasure of anticipation, thinking through the day about going out to gamble; then perhaps comes the agreeable social pleasure of making arrangements to meet friends, other gamblers; not forgetting the important point of ensuring that you have the money to gamble. That may well be a nervous-making element, especially if you can't really afford it, or can't afford to lose; then comes the physical sensation, the pitter-patter of excitement as you walk through the doors of the casino, the sight and sound of action in the gambling-rooms ... twitches of nervous tension ... finally the see-saw sensations of each coup, one after the other in rapid succession, as the wheel spins or the dice roll or the cards fall; the exhilaration of winning and the depression of losing.

The same sequence of sensations applies to any other kind of bet, or, for that matter, an investment in the stock market. Currency speculation, which I have tried, is much the best for round-the-clock action: as soon as the market in London closes, the dealing starts up in New York, and then moves to the Far East, and so back to London again. All bets are essentially the same, it is the time scale that's different. However this amalgam of sensations, of anticipation, excitement and resolution, may be described, the impact is in the body, physical.

Such feelings are not limited to gamblers. The same sort of sensations, I suppose, are felt by glider pilots, racing drivers, deep-sea divers, to name but three (operating as it were above, on and below the level of everyday living). The difference is in the pay-off: the thrill of trusting to the wind, speed around the track, piercing the darkness of deep water. When you come to think about it, almost all human activities carry an emotional charge, in varying degrees - the actor going on stage, the politician at a public meeting, the salesman trying to close a deal. In this sense gamblers are not so different. The emotional charge is a common experience, known colloquially as 'getting the adrenalin going'. There is one key difference, though, which distinguishes the activity of gambling from gliding, racing, diving and all the other things that people do when they are enjoying themselves. In all these activities, the pilot, driver, swimmer, or whoever, has trained or practised or worked out the right and the wrong way of doing it, has been taught and tested at some length how to perform and has, in sum, established that he or she is in a position to carry through the action successfully. There may be accidents - freak winds, oil on the track, oxygen failure - but the chances are very strongly in their favour. In gambling it is exactly the opposite! The odds are against the player and everyone knows it. The risk is worse than fifty-fifty. Gamblers who manage to get a fifty-fifty break count themselves lucky!

After all, you cannot win at gambling in the long run, and that is the basic truth and the basic point about it. The very point that makes the motive for gambling such a mystery. Put it this way: suppose you're walking down the street and you meet some fellow who offers to toss a coin with you, heads or tails: the only snag is, when you lose you pay a dollar, when you win, you get paid only 99 cents. You wouldn't do it, would you? You'd be out of your mind to do it. But that is what happens, exactly what happens, when you bet in a casino. I do it, you do it, and everybody does it. That is how the casinos make their huge profits.

So why gamble? The reasons are as many and various as the stars in the sky. I prefer to take the question the other way round. Why do some people not gamble? It's such a widespread trait of human conduct that it might be considered abnormal not to do it. The thought is not new. Gaming in all its forms - casinos, horse-racing, lotteries, card-games - is simply too large an industry to be based on services catering for a deviant sub-group of the population. As the great gambler and early student of probability, Geronimo Cardano (c. 1530) observed, 'Even if gambling were altogether an evil, still on account of the very large number of people who play, it would seem to be a natural evil.'

Easy Money by David Spanier

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 989