Mr.Wizard

Mr.Wizard, it's clear that you live in Las Vegas. What have you told/taught your kids about gambling, if any?

Not much. I'm open to answering their questions about it, but they never seem to have any about it.

I wonder how much gambling appeals to young people. I know that a lot of kids like poker.

I was reading the annual report for Hard Rock Casino. Clearly the patrons (many of whom are in their 20's ) have money to burn. Those pool parties, high end restaurants, and concerts are damn expensive. Not to mention the room rates. I was shocked to see that their gaming revenue was roughly $1 million per week. Their non-gaming revenue was almost double that. In contrast, most locals casinos make well over $1 million a week, even if they are aging non-glamor casinos like Arizona Charlies Decatur, Santa Fe, Boulder Station, Sunset Station or Texas Station.

Granted this was before Hard Rock built their two new hotel towers (including the all suites tower) and expanded their casino. But even so it made me realize that gambling is not all that interesting to young people, even those with a lot of disposable income.

Quote: pacomartin

... gambling is not all that interesting to young people, even those with a lot of disposable income.

Hmm, well, consider this, back in the early days of the country, when Richmond VA was the wild, wild west, every bar was a casino [gambling was big and George Washington was quite the gambler btw]. This sort of easy availability apparently was really bad for teenagers, who would get into the bars and get a gambling addiction. This is detailed in the book I Am Murdered: George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, and the Killing That Shocked a New Nation. The murderer is a young gambler out of control, and kills his Founding Father Uncle for money. He gets off, it is quite a story.

So maybe the trick, like tobacco and alcohol, is to be sure they don't start too young? Those young people you are seeing clearly have less amongst them with gambling addiction, from what you say. Will poker be the ruin of the next bunch?

I think if you're going to develop a gambling addiction, it's probably better to develop that early in life when you have alot less to lose and alot more to learn.

My philosophy of parenting it to always be truthful, and that things like gambling and alcohol should be enjoyed in moderation. The last Super Bowl I bet my 7-year-old a penny. He took the Saints +5. Hopefully that won't lead to a life of compulsive gambling. Maybe next year I'll raise my limit to 10 cents.

I would consider myself a classic "Hard Rock" kind of person. I'm 22, finishing up college, and in an upper middle class family with money to spare. I didn't gamble a penny until I was 21, but it's become a nice little pleasure in life. I like to think that I'm a pretty intelligent person, but I'm also arrogant enough to think I can beat the 1% house edge. I think that my generation enjoys gambling just as much as the next, but think about yourselves: how long did it take you to save up the gambling bankroll that you now use? Could you have gambled $25/hand and learned to live with losing $500 when you were 20-something? (I lost $400 one day and it was fucking horrible). Also I definitely agree, better to learn about gambling when you don't have too much to lose. That $400 could have been $4000 in five years.

I am 23 and have lost that kind of cash, it wasn't f'in horrible to me, it was just the chance I took while playing, I just had a really bad run, it happens. One time I was only playing $5 a hand 6 deck blackjack and lost 20 hands in a row!

If I was in my 20s and ever losing money I couldnt afford, it'd be time for a personal review.

There's lots of help out there if you "think" you might have a problem, of course we all know that first you have to get past denial.

To keep this post from being a total downer, I'd say you need not be too concerned if you just lost money that was within what you had set as a thoughtful limit. If you have indeed worked this in within what you want to spend for entertainment and have been able to stick to limits, then big losses perversely can be a necessary part of your enjoyment. Sort of like really enjoying those times when, if a fisherman, catching a lot of fish: if you can remember the times when you went out and didnt catch a thing the pleasure is tenfold.

Quote: pacomartin

I wonder how much gambling appeals to young people. I know that a lot of kids like poker.

I think there has to be some sort of bell curve that shows gambling interest by age. With my group of friends, EVERYONE was into gambling when we turned 21. I don't know what exactly the allure was... maybe because it was finally legal for us to place bets? Or maybe it was that betting $5 was a big step and a real risk to a person finishing up or just out of college? Anyway, over the past decade (I'm 32 now) I've noticed that all of them (except me, of course... haha) have lost most of their interest in gambling except for the occasional poker game. When we make our annual trip to LV now, it revolves more around nightlife, food, and golf. Perhaps when we get older and all of us settle down, it will become more of an interest again.

In junior highschool one videogame we owned at the time (I think it was the Odyssey, but it might have been Intelevision), had a poker cartridge. That's how I learned to play 5-card draw and 5-card stud. My parents didn't mind us playing it.

Somewhat later in high school a bunch of us would gather to play poker with real money, sometimes during school hours. Eventually we set up games in someone's house, using really plain chips and a deck of cards and not much else.

Problem was the betting got out of hand. We played a game called "Sangrienta" (roughly it means "blood-covered") where a player could wind up owing the pot to the winner, while the pot stayed on the table for the next round. I forget the exact rules, but that was the effect. At one game, which I couldn't attend, someone wound up with a debt of around $250. That's a small fortune for a highschool kid without even a part-time job. The games ended soon after, which was just as well.

Later all my gambling stayed confined to lotto and the ocassional visit to the racetrack (I never won a penny betting the horses), until I started going to Vegas. I quit lotto some years ago (it's a BIG house advantage), don't go to the racetrack anymore, and gamble only in casinos and the ocassional office pool and friendly sports bet with friends.

My parents never told me much about gambling. They never talk much of their trips to AC, either. My dad used to travel to NYC on business twice a year, and most years he'd go to AC with my mom. I think kids get an early lesson in gambling if they play midway/carnival games. Those things are almost impossible to win, but they cost money. I think it may be that early I got the idea that having fun playing cost money and you probably wouldn't win anything.

As a child I did different things to make money: Kool Aid stand, sold used comics, sold cold soda from a wagon at the Fourth of July parade.

One summer day as adjunct to selling Kool Aid I offered a roulette game.

I had somehow acquired a small, cheap plastic roulette wheel, had no idea what the rules were, but it didn't seem to matter: kids flocked to play, a penny a spin.

For two days they played, and I "cleaned up."

It itch starts early.

Quote: ahiromu

I would consider myself a classic "Hard Rock" kind of person. I'm 22, finishing up college, and in an upper middle class family with money to spare. I didn't gamble a penny until I was 21, but it's become a nice little pleasure in life. I like to think that I'm a pretty intelligent person, but I'm also arrogant enough to think I can beat the 1% house edge. I think that my generation enjoys gambling just as much as the next, but think about yourselves: how long did it take you to save up the gambling bankroll that you now use? Could you have gambled $25/hand and learned to live with losing $500 when you were 20-something? (I lost $400 one day and it was fucking horrible). Also I definitely agree, better to learn about gambling when you don't have too much to lose. That $400 could have been $4000 in five years.

I used to be in the same boat as you. I didn't gamble a cent until a few years ago, but once I started and lost quite a bit (maybe $1-2K?) until I discovered the Wizard's site. I still can't afford to gamble, but I hit two video poker RF's in the last year and have made those winnings my exclusive bankroll and have done pretty well since then. I don't try and beat the house but I do a pretty good job of staying even and getting some freebies.
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I play up to $25/hand blackjack, some live poker/poker-style table games, and video poker from $1.25 up to 10-play quarters. Probably too risky for my bankroll but like I said, have stayed afloat thus far.

My father couldn't wait for me and my sisters to get old enough to understand the game of stud poker. I guess I must've been about 6 or 7 when he taught me what beats what and a simple form of bettng strategy. But my father wasn't the type to let us win just because we were kids; if we played badly or didn't fold an obvious losing hand we had to learn to accept losing like a grown-up.

The day after my 21st birthday my uncle took me to Acquaduct racetrack and taught me how to read the Racing Form.

In 1980, a couple of years after Atlantic City opened their casinos, I opened my own blackjack game at work, during our lunch hour. It started out 10-20cents, and we played for an hour in a small conference room. I had about 4 players. I had bought casino-style clay chips, made myself a BJ felt, and my father built me a really good-looking shoe out of plywood, which held 4 decks.

Within a few weeks my table was full and there were people standing behind seats, waiting for the ones sitting to go broke so they could get a chance to play. After a month people started getting to the table 30 minutes early, they asked me to raise the stakes to 25-50c, and everybody wanted to go double-or-nothing when I had to call last hand.

Since I used A.C. rules people used the game as a training ground, so they wouldn't be embarrassed when they went to the "real" casinos. I had taken a few classes in counting and gave my players some tips once in a while and I made up some strategy cards for them.

Eventually our lunch hour was lasting two, two-and-a-half hours, and I was raking in $100/week. One player even wanted to franchise the game and offered me a percentage of his profits! I laughed and told him, "Just open your own game, I don't mind" but he said it had to have my name on it before anyone would play. Can you imagine?

A few of the other employees got cranky and raised a stink because half their team would be missing for half a day, there was a whole lot of cussin' and hollerin' going on and people sitting outside the conference room couldn't concentrate, smoke billowed out like from an atom bomb when we opened the door, and I finally got shut down. I had been running the game for over a year by that time and frankly I was tired so I didn't mind so much, but it was sure fun while it lasted.

I was born a gambler. My father says it runs in the family, and I got the gene. My brothers did not. Going back to elementary school I played poker for small change, and made prop bets on silly stuff, like making a free throw. However the money didn't get big until college when I started to book blackjack games at a friend's house. Almost every night I won everybody's money, about $100, which was a lot at the time. To this day I enjoy betting on odd-ball stuff, like if a random person will be able to name the vice president (sadly, most can't). Basically, I'll bet on anything if I at least perceive at advantage.