Winning is Believing

What makes most casino gambling so seductive is the promise of the really big win, coupled with the experience of winning just a little. We believe we can win again because we have won before, but the truth is that only the house collects casino gambling profits.

We just don’t stop to compare our experiences with the numbers. This human tendency explains the old gambler’s joke; and where’s the sense in this nonsense? Any compulsive gambler can tell you right away that it may not be reasonable, but it feels right.

Whether or not scheduling is more important than the Oedipus complex in determining who will gamble, it’s certainly a factor. While it may be in the interests of the gambler to deny that he’s the victim of clever manipulation.

A struggle for control with a phantom father is so much more romantic— it is in the interest of casino owners to know about such things, and you can bet that they do. Ever since the 19th century, gambling houses have understood how to manipulate the odds in the house’s favor while letting bettors win just enough to keep them interested.

That’s why slot machines pay off— sometimes. They don’t just swallow your money and never give you anything, because the people who set the ratio of payoffs understand that a schedule like that won’t keep you playing.

Sophisticated knowledge of schedules of reinforcement has been the basis of some of the most sophisticated criticism of “free casino gambling”. There are psychologists who feel that under certain conditions, anyone, no matter what his childhood experiences, could be made into a compulsive gambler.

All it takes is the right schedule, plus an initial willingness to play. Of course, some of us may never fall for the tinny lure of the slots. We know better, we may say. But who can be sure we wouldn’t fall for a cleverly manipulated stock deal or the kind of gamble offered by the cynical boss who makes you believe for years that you’re always on the verge of that big promotion while he squeezes out every last drop of cheap work?

What saves most of us from the fate of the gambling addict is the ability to be cool and reasonable about it. We may willingly “donate” some money to the casinos in the thrill of the moment, but when we get home and realize how easy it is to lose and how hard to win, when we grasp what the odds really are, we stop waisting our time playing in land-based casinos as well as in online casinos.

Some people can be very reasonable in other areas of their lives, but not in gambling. Such people usually don’t wind up completely destroyed, even by a serious addiction. In worse shape are the ones who live for gambling and who never get away from it into any other activity. There are only two kinds of full-time gamblers: those who are ruined, and those who wise up.