What is So Appealing about Gambling?
There is a certain attraction to gambling that may seem fairly obvious to those who enjoy it as a fun past time, but to others who do not participate, it may seem a complete mystery. There are certainly pros and cons to risking your money in the pursuit of making more money.
However, it can depend on your personal viewpoint as to whether it is viewed in a good or bad light. This article will look at these contradictions and arguments to help more people understand why there is this appeal and how it affects those that succumb to it.
Where Does it Come From?
Since the dawn of time, people have taken risks to survive. Our cave dwelling ancestors will have needed to take risks with their very lives in order to hunt for food and stay alive and that side of our makeup is a hard wired instinctive prerogative that we all possess to a greater or lesser degree.
In modern times as civilization progressed and money came into form as a convenient bargaining device, the concept of gambling took form as another kind of risk taking. In this sense, the risk was not to life or limb, but could still have a bearing on a person's livelihood especially if they lost all their money and could not buy food.
This form of monetary gambling fills the void left behind when we no longer needed to risk everything in order to survive and has such a strong magnetic appeal simply because we are programmed to take risks.
Why Do Some People Gamble and Others Not?
While many people do not abide by gambling and do not partake, it is not because their programming has evolved to a higher place. It is simply because the prerogative to take risks in this way is subdued or has been replaced by other habits or the need to adhere to a different set of morals.
But for those that do gamble with money or indeed any personal possession, the appeal is strong enough to cause them to desire to risk money to win more money. In other words, they are chasing a supposed easy way to make more money from what they already have quickly and without having to work for it.
Beating the Odds
There is another aspect to this often unfathomable attraction to risking money to get more of it and that's the temptation to try and beat the odds laid down by the betting establishment such as bookmakers. Everyone wants to be known as being a winner whether its conscious or unconscious, because of the perceived increase in social standing and the person's overall attractiveness (especially to the opposite sex - which in this instance tends to be more common in men).
People will go to great lengths to appear more affluent and blessed by good luck than they really are. Some try to hide their losses while talking up their winnings, while others get caught up in trying to work all manner of betting systems that are supposed to either greatly increase their odds of winning or simply claim to be able to "beat the bookies at their own game!"
The Big Win
It may seem like a contradiction, but most professional or highly active gamblers do not generally go chasing after that elusive big win. If they did, they wouldn't be in business for very long. That's because the big jackpots also come with incredibly long odds, which is something expert gamblers tend to avoid.
Long odds mean very little chance of ever winning, which is why people who gamble regularly, often or in an expert or professional guise prefer the much shorter odds of things like card games (especially those where some skill is involved such as poker or blackjack), horse racing, video poker and casino games like roulette or craps where they will prefer to bet on even money or very short odds wagers (red/black in roulette, pass in craps for example).
The majority of occasional gamblers, on the other hand are routinely attracted to the big winning jackpots. These include things like state or national lotteries, scratch cards, accumulating sports bets, jackpot slots games and similar that promise enormous winnings that are delivered infrequently and to relatively few players.
They are seduced by the promise of winning a life changing amount of money and cheerfully spend their dollar on a lottery line of numbers in the hope that they will be the next lottery millionaire. Of course the odds of that happening are so incredibly long that there is a far better chance of living to be the oldest person alive albeit never having won any great amount of money.
So it is perhaps now more obvious why people find gambling so fascinating and appealing despite it shortcomings as a leisure pastime. The thrill of risking a wager on the chance of substantially increasing its value with a win is something that we all experience at some level.
Some more than others, in any case. Which is why there will always be as many exponents as objectors no matter how compelling each argument for or against may be.
