Something I've been mulling over for a while is "what counts as 'gambling'?". Does the level of skill matter? The level of randomness? The stakes? The expected return?
When I think of things that are certainly in the gambling category I think about the lottery. There's no skill in playing the lottery. There's an entry fee and the house takes a guaranteed cut. Buying a lottery ticket is a terrible idea from an expected value standpoint but every now and then someone does get very lucky and hit big. I buy a ticket every few months because I like to daydream about being rich enough to quit my job and having a ticket helps bring power to those daydreams. But every time I do I know I'm just pissing money away.
Roulette is the exact same thing. No matter what anyone with a 'system' may tell you there's no way to beat roulette. If you sit and play roulette long enough there will be only one winner: the casino. Some people will get lucky and swing into the positive realm but it isn't sustainable.
Bingo scratch cards are the same as well. What about actual bingo? It's impossible to be a great bingo player but you can be bad. If you're too distracted to stamp some of the numbers your odds of winning will plummet. Find a room with enough suitably distracted people and I suppose it's possible for the normal dude to realistically make money... Is he still gambling? Does it matter that the circumstances are hard to set up?
Along that vein, what about playing Barbu for money? I played a fair amount of money Bu in University (the stakes were practically peanuts but when you're a starving student peanuts can taste pretty good) and I won way more than I lost. It may be illusory superiority speaking again but I'd like to think I was really good at the game and certainly in terms of all the people who played in the Lounge if we'd been playing for real stakes I'm sure I could have made a living at it. Barbu has a lot of randomness (it is a card game, after all) but it also has a lot of skill. If you can be good enough to win most of the time does it stop being gambling? Is it possible for a game to be gambling for most of the players and not gambling for one of them?
On another line entirely, what about McDonald's Monopoly? You're getting tokens for buying food you'd be buying anyway. There's no cost at all to play and you might win a lot of cash. (Realistically although they don't charge extra for the tokens they expect more people will go to the restaurant and buy the specific things with tokens on them, like large pops. So while there isn't really an entry fee... They're not being charitable!) But it's all luck. Is this gambling?
How about playing Diablo III? After you buy the game there's no cost to keep playing. You can sell items to other players for real cash so it's possible that you'll kill some boss and get a rare and valuable item. Is getting the item gambling? Is killing the boss? Is playing at all? It feels a lot like McDonald's Monopoly in that you can just be doing what you'd normally be doing (eating a Big Mac, playing a game) and suddenly you win some money.
Does it matter that playing and gearing optimally will increase your odds of getting fat loots? One could argue that investing more time into eating Big Macs is comparable to playing more Diablo 3. I'd certainly like to think video game skill is more meaningful than Big Mac eating skill but is there actually a difference between the two? Even if there isn't, is either one gambling?
7 comments:
I'm currently thinking it depends why you're buying the Big Macs/playing D3 that determines if you're gambling or not. Gambling seems to be paying a cost to get a chance at a reward - so are you spending time because you want to play D3, or to get a chance at valuable loot.
Since I started working in a casino I've done a lot of research into gambling. Did you know you can actually make profit at bingo? The prizes are set without knowing the number of players so if you can identify when the player/prize ratio is good you can profit in the long run.
If you wanted to start playing games for a living moving back to NB is the right play. Housing is dirt cheep here. We haven't set a number yet but I could almost certainly rent my extra apartment(all included) to you for a 3rd or even a 4th of what your upkeep is in Toronto.
To quote Satan, "You can't cheat at bingo. If you could, I would, but you can't. I won because I was lucky. Luck to end up in a town full of losers."
I don't think that skill or expected returns rule out gambling, because most people would unambiguously identify poker as gambling, as is playing a broken slot machine that on average pays out. I think the essence of gambling is putting money in, hoping to get money out, when the returns are luck-based and may be negative.
So blackjack with card counting is still gambling, but analyzing the random number generators in slot machines to figure out which ones will pay out soon is not.
Still this definition is missing something because it would count commission sales as gambling, when I would tend to think that people would generally say, "Oh, yeah, I guess that is like gambling if you think about it." but not really agree that commission sales was gambling.
Ian Flemming would take issue without your evaluation of Roulette. Next thing you'll be claiming there's no skill to Baccarat either. Way to destroy the entire premise of Casino Royale!
@Caspur: Given the numbers you were tossing around over the holidays and a quick search of the rental market in Moncton I'd suspect you'd be a lot closer to 60-70% of what I'm paying now instead of 25%. Certainly interesting though...
@Sthenno: Is barbu/poker gambling for the utmost elite players? Doyle Brunson in his prime was able to rake in millions without much if any danger of going broke playing poker. (He did lose an unfathomable amount of money betting on golf/sports...) Certainly for the average Joe who plays in a home game or goes to the casino every now and then poker is absolutely gambling. But if you're elite and able to find a lot of fish to play against is it still gambling?
It does feel a lot like some sales positions. Some days you make a lot of sales and make a lot of money. Some days, not so much. The risk of going on a real negative tear and going broke is more significant in poker though which could well be the difference.
Can't cheat at Bingo! Sounds like Satan isn't trying hard enough. I can think of a couple ways to cheat at bingo. (change the distribution of balls in the cage, get really good at forging your card)
I think the reason people consider poker gambling is that they are looking at it on an individual game or even and individual hand basis. Maybe you are almost sure of making a million dollars playing it this year, but every time you push all in (or at least almost every time) you might just be throwing all your money away.
Maybe the difference between this and commission sales is that you can lose your stake? Or maybe it's just tradition. At any rate, I thought of commission sales because I figure that's the best analog to diablo 3.
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