Gambling can be a fun way to make a game more interesting. Some people can't stop there, but government lost any moral high ground when they legalized state lotteries.

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gruez 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>but government lost any moral high ground when they legalized state lotteries.

What's the implication here? "In for a penny, in for a pound", so might as well legalize every other form of gambling?

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SoftTalker 18 hours ago | parent [-]

I think so. If you're going to regulate sports betting (and I think there are good arguments for doing that), but you yourself run a lottery which is a tax on people who don't understand probability, then you are just preaching in a "do as I say not as I do" kind of way.

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HWR_14 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The difference between the ability to make bets 2-3 times a week for a dollar or two and the ability to drop $500 every play of a sporting event is dramatic.

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evilduck 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That describes someone with maybe an irresponsible but manageable gambling habit, not a gambling addict.

Maybe it's because of pay-at-the-pump popularity now but have you never seen someone standing off to the side of the main gas station counter surrounded by a pile of scratch offs? People exist who will drop their entire paycheck on them in a single day. I've also seen people buy irresponsibly large stacks of Powerball tickets and not just the "oh, I like to fantasize about winning so I buy a ticket each week since you can't win if you don't play". It's gambling all the same.

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kjkjadksj 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What about someone buying $50 of scratchers a day? Why conflate a reasonable habit on one thing with an unreasonable habit on the other when both can obviously be done reasonably or unreasonably?

	▲	laughing_man 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This. There's a lady that comes in to my local 7/11 and spends at least $200 on lottery tickets every week. There's no limit for people who really like to buy lottery tickets.

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bl4kers 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The predominate reasoning for a long time now has been lotteries are addicting and bad but a small demand is guaranteed. Therefore, in the name of maximizing social benefit, only the government should run them and the profit is used to funds something less partisan (e.g. education, parks, conservation, gambling addiction services)

For these private betting firms, it's open season trying to find whales like mobile gaming, and there's no end to their greed and exploitation.

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ikr678 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You regulate other vices (alcohol, tobacco). Limiting gambling to govt owned lotteries or licenced operators is no different, you can set limits on harm, remove the profit motive if the govt operates it, and (at least where I live) the state lottery funds a large number of community grants.

Regulating it also removes demand for underground or foreign online gambling.

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dinkumthinkum 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think this is a little myopic. There are degrees to this. It is very rare to see anyone chase their losses to a lottery ticket. I have literally never heard of anyone doing that in my life. If anything, you see some poor place overspend a bit on those tickets. With all the other types of gambling, you see people being wiped out. I think the details matter.

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chistev 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does it really make games more interesting? If anything, doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game?

Is anxiety interesting?

And if you only bet a negligible amount of money, then the outcome of the game doesn't really matter all that much.

	▲	emptybits 14 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Does it really make games more interesting? > If anything, doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game? > Is anxiety interesting? Yes. Adding anxiety generally makes things more interesting. Think of watching a story or a film or a game play out. Good stories often involve giving the reader some anxiety. Tension. Not knowing what's going to happen, but being somehow invested in it ... to stay engaged.
	▲	laughing_man 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Personally I suspect American football viewership would collapse if you actually managed to ban all the gambling people do on it, from office pools to Vegas lines.
	▲	roland35 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I am staying away from sports betting, but I have done fantasy football a few times. I was constantly on edge from it all, even when I was winning! Constantly thinking of who I needed to pick up, who to trade, which matchups were good, it was a time sink. And I ended up losing to my 10 year old nephew for the championship game!
	▲	JumpCrisscross 14 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game? I don’t generally like gambling. On a recent trip to Vegas I socially gambled with friends and won about $5k, but then lost $500 of it and was more annoyed about losing that sum than the net amount gained. Such is my personality. That said, a friendly game of poker is absolutely more fun with a $10 buy-in or whatnot. So I can see the general idea holding water. What we don’t need are (a) ads or (b) large bets.

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dolphinscorpion 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fun turns to disaster when you lose. Sadly, many can't control it, destroying entire lives in the process.

(Not passing judgment)

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unethical_ban 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are significant, real differences in betting on a random number generator once a week and betting constantly on the real outcomes of individual behaviors. Most notably with sports, institutionalized prop bets destroy the integrity of the game.

At least with win/loss, the ability to outright manipulate the outcome for financial gain by players, coaches and refs is a lot harder to accomplish without detection. Prop bets? Who knows if a player or ref or coach made a decision on who gets the first 3pt basket of the second half?

	▲	SoftTalker 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah I've never made a prop bet, or even a points bet, that feels too degenerate to me. I have occasionally made a $10 money line bet on a game and that does make it more interesting to me in that now I have a small stake in the outcome. YMMV. And people do spend stupid amounts of money on Powerball tickets too. I just think if the state is running a numbers racket, that they don't have much of a leg to stand on when they want to regulate other gambling.

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actionfromafar 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Someone did a bad thing, now we must do all the bad things."