One thing that I never understood is the idea that "gambling is fun". In the culture that I'm from gambling is considered something left for the "lower class". It's a bit similar to acting up while heavily drunk, not exactly something to be proud of.
The first few times that I heard something to the tune of "Vegas, baby!" I honestly thought the person was being funny by ridiculing themselves slightly.
Honest question: have you ever tried it? Ever played blackjack at a casino?
I've only done it a handful of times, but it's a gigantic exciting roller coaster ride of emotions as you win and lose real amounts of money, whether they're in tens or hundreds of dollars or whatever scale you're at.
It's way more exciting than the thrills from a superhero movie in the cinema because it's real life, real money. It's more exciting than sports because it's your win, your money. When you're winning, you can't believe how much fun it is. All your life you were told an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, and now you feel like you've found a magic shortcut!
And if you lose, well... next time. You're sure you'll make up for it and then some.
It can honestly be hard to imagine until you've tried it. I was similarly confused until I experienced it. But it really taps into something deep in the primate brain, about hopes and dreams fulfilled, about getting lucky and rich, about being special.
There's a good reason I've only ever gone a handful of times, and limited myself to a small amount of money. Because it's also scarily easy to see how you could get addicted to that feeling.
I have and had the opposite experience. All I see is games with uninteresting choices, pointless rule systems due to those choices being uninteresting, and an endless parade of negative EVs trying to pretend they aren’t somehow. People who enjoy it clearly have a very different relationship with math and probability I guess.
Wait until you find out some Blackjack is exploitable to be positive EV and requires interesting levels of multitasking the first few hundred hours. Poker can also be profitable due to marks, even with a negative EV rake.
But yes, many games, especially Roulette, Slots, and Craps, are blatantly negative EV. However, Craps is very fun due to the team table dynamics.
> People who enjoy it clearly have a very different relationship with math and probability I guess.
That sounds like you're implying that only mathematically less-literate people gamble.
I think that's wrong, though. I've got as strong of a background in stats and probability as they come, and that hasn't changed my enjoyment of it at all. Maybe it's even added to it, since there's the added challenge of finding the least-bad bet.
You're paying for the excitement of the ups and downs.
You sound like someone who says they don't like the movies because all they see are uninteresting plot predicaments, pointless obstacles, and an endless parade of non-optimal choices by characters all trying to pretend the ending isn't going to be predictable.
All I can say is, to each their own, but it definitely sounds like you haven't grasped the essential emotional quality of the entire experience -- that perhaps you don't have, but many other people certainly do. And that aspect doesn't have anything to do with mathematical literacy.
> All I see is games with uninteresting choices, pointless rule systems due to those choices being uninteresting, and an endless parade of negative EVs
If this was true, clearly you should be playing at the poker tables and raking in the cash.
Being able to identify a game as -EV doesn't mean you are going to be great at poker? Or else why isn't every statistician in the world a professional poker player?
I have played the slot machine, and it was hilarious how fast it used up the money I had put into it - I had a genuine laugh. I heard that the machines outside of main casinos in Vegas have much higher payout rates, so that you can take more time to lose your money. Makes sense, someone has to pay for the Eiffel Tower model.
My question/comment was about the overall cultural perception of gambling. I just found it strange in America - a small instance of a "culture shock".
You don’t even have to go to a casino. I personally wouldn’t look at a poker night with friends as being much different than getting together to play a board game.
It's different though. Poker with friends, you can only ever win as much as your friends put in, which usually isn't going to be that much. You're right -- it feels closer to a board game.
But at a casino, there's no similar limit to how much you can win. It feels like your dreams could literally come true in Las Vegas, that you could come back home and buy a new house. Poker with buddies doesn't include that possibility.
Poker with buddies is still gambling though and it’s a lot of fun. Maybe more fun than casino gambling (depending on your friend group). I wonder if the GP thinks people who have a Thursday night game with friends are low class as well?
Oh for sure -- I'll take poker with buddies over a casino any night of the week.
It's funny, for whatever reason I don't mentally put "poker with friends" in the category of "gambling". I mean obviously it technically is -- no argument there -- but when I think of "gambling" I think of "potentially dangerous/addictive", and (hopefully) poker with friends isn't.
I'm also curious what GP thinks about whether poker with buddies is "lower class", or if it's only a casino thing. (Or gambling dens? Backroom tables?)
I went to the old Monte Carlo casino, just for the experience, won 400 euro, but didn't feel much excitement ... it paid for the helicopter ride though.
Go down to the races, there is real excitement, real energy, it is fun. Saying it is "lower class" is poor (I would say that is ultimate "low class" mentality). Lots of people have other stuff going on in their lives, so they watch sport and having a small bet on makes it more exciting.
The gambling culture that exists in the US is completely bizarre because it is designed towards the most extractive, most pointless forms of gambling because of political pressure (the gambling industry are usually the biggest donors to both parties every presidential). Gambling is not something that should ever be fun by itself but something that can enhance an existing interest.
And most people can have a bet on their sports team, and that is it. They put on a accumulator, they bet on the home team, it is fun and ends there. Gambling addiction is something quite distinct from this (and something that only impacts a huge minority of people, usually under 1%...the reason why it is so pervasive in some countries, US and HK being the two most notorious is due to government intervention that maximises harm).
Poker is fun because it is social, blackjack is okay but verging into degen, there is a spectrum here.
Yeah the lower classes gamble on the races, the upper classes gamble on companies and financial derivatives. The even more ridiculous thing is one bet has a positive expected value and one doesn't.
In the UK we have these things called "fruit machines"[0] which are common in certain types of bar and pub. They have lots of buttons and colourful lights and in theory there's some kind of "game" you can play to win money from here, but I've never been able to figure it out; on the rare occasions that I've put cash into a fruit machine, all it did was flash some lights and tell me it was keeping the money.
But what's interesting to me about these machines is that, since they're just big computers, their expected rate of return is entirely determined by their software. And it's a legal requirement for them to have a little infobox printed on the front that tells you exactly what that rate of return is. I don't remember what that rate typically, but it's definitely less than one pound returned for every pound gambled.
In other words, these machines literally say right there on the front of the machine, next to the part where you insert your coins, that by playing their "game" you are mathematically guaranteed to lose money. And yet people - lots of them, I assume, based on how prevalent these machines are - still gladly pour their spare change into these black holes.
Whoever invented the fruit machine must be laughing all the way to the bank.
A friend of a flatmate made a lot of money selling some bingo halls. He knew exactly how bad the returns on fruit machines are, because a handful in the atrium were half his profit when he was running them. He still liked to play on fruit machine whenever he saw one...
It's essentially a way of hacking your brain to care about something that you otherwise wouldn't. I wouldn't suggest anyone gamble casino-style, because a relative minority has a real pathology there. Still, I've been known to make non-monetary bets on the outcome of sporting events (e.g. "loser cleans up"). It gets you invested in the outcome, which does make it more enjoyable.
People find uncertainty and sudden twists engaging. That’s broadly true in humor, books, movies, and gambling.
I find gambling on games where the house has a large edge generally uninteresting, but I’ll play craps with friends in Vegas. Games where player skill has an element and games like poker against other players are quite a bit more interesting.
Well, that's precisely how classes work, no? There are guys who spend all day in a bar drinking. That's very lower class, and I wouldn't do it. But they themselves are lower class, so that behaviour comes naturally to them.
The first few times that I heard something to the tune of "Vegas, baby!" I honestly thought the person was being funny by ridiculing themselves slightly.