This post is meant to provide a broad introduction to the topic of gambling. It's aimed not only at potential gamblers, but also academics who are interested in what gambling is and how it affects society.
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I'll start with a proper definition of gambling.
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To gamble is to risk something of value on an event with the hope of winning something of value.
For an activity to be considered 'real money gambling,' you need three qualities:
- Stakes
- Risk
- Winnings
The stakes are the amount that you're risking. Risk is the possibility you'll lose. And winnings are the payoff when things go your way.
Take away one of those factors, and the activity doesn't constitute gambling.
But you can also bet on who's going to win the Super Bowl at the beginning of football season and wait months to find out if you've won. That's a legal definition, but it's also a practical definition.
The rest of this page looks at how these factors work in the actual practice of gambling.
Gaming vs. Gambling
You'll often hear people in the industry refer to gambling as 'gaming.'
I don't like this usage, as I think the word 'gaming' has been co-opted from other activities that are already well-defined. People who play video games refer to their hobby as 'gaming.' Role-players (like Dungeons and Dragons fans) also refer to their hobby as gaming.
'Gaming,' in this context, though, implies a couple of things. The first is that the gambling in question is legal and happening in a licensed, regulated way.
The second is that the gambling in question is happening in the United States; other countries don't feel the need to legitimize gambling by calling it something else.
How Big a Deal Is Gambling?
I've seen writers claim that gambling is integral to our identity as humans. Everything we do can be looked at from a risk-reward perspective.
You can also find cultural evidence that suggests gambling is integral to our identity as a society. The gambling scene in Casablanca is critical to the plot, and that's considered one of the finest films of all time.
That's not the only movie where gambling plays a role either. Some movies, like The Hustler and The Cincinnati Kid, feature gambling as a prominent part of the plot.
But another way to examine the significance of gambling in our culture is to look at the size of the industry financially.
If you only account for legal gambling, then the market was $335 billion—in 2009. That was a decade ago. Imagine how big the industry has grown since.
And that doesn't account for the massive amounts of money that are gambled daily and weekly under the table, at neighborhood poker games and in bars where people are betting on sporting events.
Best Gaming System For Beginners
The answer to the question, how big a deal is gambling, is simple indeed. Gambling is HUGE.
Gambling Throughout History
There's plenty of evidence that gambling has been a big deal for a long time. They were using dice (the same kind of dice we use in craps games) in Mesopotamia, all the way back to 3100 BC.
Vegas Gambling For Beginners
We also know that casinos were in operation in China around 1000 BC, too. One can imagine that people were betting on various sporting events of some kind even before that.
Poker is based on a Persian game called As-Nas, which is over 300 years old. Persia is now modern-day Iran, so there's some irony in the fact that a game that seems so quintessentially American originated in a country where the US currently has ongoing conflict with.
The Ridotto, in Venice, would be recognizable as a modern casino, and it opened in the 17th century.
I'll write more about the different kinds of gambling below, but I'd also like to point out that efforts to ban gambling come and go, and various kinds of gambling are legal or illegal depending on the time period and the place.
Types of Gambling
You can categorize the forms of gambling in multiple ways, but here are some broad categories worth considering.
Casino games are games where you gamble against the establishment where you're playing. You might also call these gambling games 'house-banked,' because the house pays off the winners and collects money from the losers. Quote about gambling.
You can further subdivide casino games into gambling machines and table games. Gambling machines include slot machines and video poker, but they're not limited to that. You can also find video versions of blackjack, craps, and roulette in many casinos.
Table games, on the other hand, use chips, are played at a table, and require the use of a dealer—who represents the casino. Prominent examples of table games in casinos are:
- Baccarat
- Blackjack
- Craps
- Roulette
Numbers games are often seen in casinos, too. Some include games like the lottery, bingo, and keno (although keno is also considered a casino game). These games all involve choosing numbers at random and hoping to match other numbers that are chosen at random.
Poker games and other card games, where you risk your money against the other players at the table, are hugely popular. Some people don't distinguish between poker and casino games, but they're making a mistake.
What makes a poker game a poker game is the involvement of the other players. Other card games work similarly, although some card games are also just casino games.
Sports betting is one of the most popular ways to bet. Bets on horse and dog races are a peculiar subcategory of betting on sports, too.
From a business perspective, sports betting is interesting because of how the house makes money. Sure, you can bet on a football game with a buddy.
Is cafe casino legit. But most serious sports bettors wager with someone who takes care of such things professionally. Such a business is called a sportsbook, and they normally charge $110 for a $100 bet, so they can make a profit.
Horse tracks and dog tracks have a different model. They have prize pools based on a percentage of the money they've brought in, and they withhold a percentage to make a profit.
Individual gamblers are normally playing at a mathematical disadvantage and lose money over time. Some strategies can overcome this mathematical disadvantage, but such strategies aren't simple or easy. They also don't apply to all activities. No amount of strategy can beat the lottery in the long run, for example.
Problem Gambling
Gambling can be fun. It can be profitable for a minority of gamblers, too. But since it affects brain chemistry, gambling can become a psychological problem.
Some people think that you must ingest a substance to form an addiction, but psychologists recognize behavioral addictions, too—addictions to food or sex, would be examples.
More pertinent to this discussion, though, gambling addiction is a real danger to anyone with a tendency to 'overdo' things.
In fact, slot machine games are notorious for having intermittent reinforcement schedules that cause gambling addiction.
Also, one of the biggest signs of compulsive behavior is a lack of ability to enjoy an activity. Once gambling stops being fun, you're in serious danger.
Conclusion
That's a broad overview and introduction to the subject of gambling, but it's a complicated subject with many facets. In fact, you'll never run out of blog posts, articles, or even books to read on the subject.
Gambling is fun and exciting, but it carries elements of risk with it that you might or might not have considered. Sure, you know you might lose money, but you might also become addicted.
Playing video games used to be something kids did to pass the time inside during the summer. As technology has evolved, gaming is now more accessible to everyone—Big Fish Games reports that in 2016, 65% of households now have a gaming device.
Gaming has become a big business: it's projected that approximately $115 billion will be spent on gaming in 2018.
So what's all the excitement about?
Today's gamer can meet people across the globe while fighting zombies or armies, create communities and interact with friends, or even compete and play for large amounts of prize money—if they're top performers.
If you're thinking about getting into gaming, or if you're already playing online but are looking to get more involved, consider the following tips.
Select Your Platform
Choosing the right platform for game play can seem daunting. Start by looking at your budget, and deciding how much money you want to spend. If you want to only play games, a video game console is probably your best option. If you take your gaming more seriously, a PC may be right for you. Consider these advantages and disadvantages to each platform before making a final decision.
PC Gaming
A PC gaming setup—while most popular and perfect for simulation and real-time strategy, first-person games—is more expensive than a gaming console, but you can use it for activities other than playing games.
This option may be a bigger up-front investment, but you can upgrade the system as you grow into gaming, and it also has great multiplayer capability for social gamers.
Consoles
With pricing starting at under $200, consoles offer a huge game selection with no need for any special technical skills. You simply insert or download a game and start playing. Sports games and role-playing games perform well on consoles—better than PC systems.
Consoles have limited multiplayer options and can become outdated quickly. Newer versions are released frequently, and gaming developers keep up with the releases, meaning game selections can become limited in an instant.
Smartphones
Approximately one-third of gamers play on their mobile devices. The convenience of carrying your games with you makes mobile gaming attractive to most people. Candy Crush can help you stay distracted while you're standing in line at the grocery store, but the small screen size limits your gaming experience.
Gaming apps are popular, and new apps are being released daily. It's fairly inexpensive to download the latest popular release and get a few hours of play time in as a distraction if that's what you're looking for.
Choose Your Bandwidth
Another big choice you need to make as you move into or upgrade your gaming experience is bandwidth, the maximum rate at which data downloads from the internet. The better the bandwidth, the quicker your download time.
Faster download speeds are preferred for gaming, but they can get expensive fast. Aim for the best combination of speed and price, and consider how frequently you use the internet at home. If you and your family members or roommates spend hours on Netflix or gaming together, ensure your service plan can support multiple users.
Find Deals
Now it's time for the fun part: shopping for games. While it may be thrilling to wait in line for the latest release of Destiny, your pocketbook will thank you if you use a little restraint and these tips.
Casino Gambling For Beginners
Wait a Week
It may be tempting to be one of the first owners of a game, but being patient can pay off. Waiting a week, or a month if you can make it, can save you some money. Pay attention at your local game shop—chances are they'll drop prices on games sometime after their release.
Buy Used Games
Some stores mark down used games. Look around for the deals and build up your gaming library without spending tons of cash. Note that used doesn't always mean a bargain. Popular games hold their value, so check price tags as you shop to truly get the best deal.
Sell Old Games
Online Gaming For Beginners
For an activity to be considered 'real money gambling,' you need three qualities:
- Stakes
- Risk
- Winnings
The stakes are the amount that you're risking. Risk is the possibility you'll lose. And winnings are the payoff when things go your way.
Take away one of those factors, and the activity doesn't constitute gambling.
But you can also bet on who's going to win the Super Bowl at the beginning of football season and wait months to find out if you've won. That's a legal definition, but it's also a practical definition.
The rest of this page looks at how these factors work in the actual practice of gambling.
Gaming vs. Gambling
You'll often hear people in the industry refer to gambling as 'gaming.'
I don't like this usage, as I think the word 'gaming' has been co-opted from other activities that are already well-defined. People who play video games refer to their hobby as 'gaming.' Role-players (like Dungeons and Dragons fans) also refer to their hobby as gaming.
'Gaming,' in this context, though, implies a couple of things. The first is that the gambling in question is legal and happening in a licensed, regulated way.
The second is that the gambling in question is happening in the United States; other countries don't feel the need to legitimize gambling by calling it something else.
How Big a Deal Is Gambling?
I've seen writers claim that gambling is integral to our identity as humans. Everything we do can be looked at from a risk-reward perspective.
You can also find cultural evidence that suggests gambling is integral to our identity as a society. The gambling scene in Casablanca is critical to the plot, and that's considered one of the finest films of all time.
That's not the only movie where gambling plays a role either. Some movies, like The Hustler and The Cincinnati Kid, feature gambling as a prominent part of the plot.
But another way to examine the significance of gambling in our culture is to look at the size of the industry financially.
If you only account for legal gambling, then the market was $335 billion—in 2009. That was a decade ago. Imagine how big the industry has grown since.
And that doesn't account for the massive amounts of money that are gambled daily and weekly under the table, at neighborhood poker games and in bars where people are betting on sporting events.
Best Gaming System For Beginners
The answer to the question, how big a deal is gambling, is simple indeed. Gambling is HUGE.
Gambling Throughout History
There's plenty of evidence that gambling has been a big deal for a long time. They were using dice (the same kind of dice we use in craps games) in Mesopotamia, all the way back to 3100 BC.
Vegas Gambling For Beginners
We also know that casinos were in operation in China around 1000 BC, too. One can imagine that people were betting on various sporting events of some kind even before that.
Poker is based on a Persian game called As-Nas, which is over 300 years old. Persia is now modern-day Iran, so there's some irony in the fact that a game that seems so quintessentially American originated in a country where the US currently has ongoing conflict with.
The Ridotto, in Venice, would be recognizable as a modern casino, and it opened in the 17th century.
I'll write more about the different kinds of gambling below, but I'd also like to point out that efforts to ban gambling come and go, and various kinds of gambling are legal or illegal depending on the time period and the place.
Types of Gambling
You can categorize the forms of gambling in multiple ways, but here are some broad categories worth considering.
Casino games are games where you gamble against the establishment where you're playing. You might also call these gambling games 'house-banked,' because the house pays off the winners and collects money from the losers. Quote about gambling.
You can further subdivide casino games into gambling machines and table games. Gambling machines include slot machines and video poker, but they're not limited to that. You can also find video versions of blackjack, craps, and roulette in many casinos.
Table games, on the other hand, use chips, are played at a table, and require the use of a dealer—who represents the casino. Prominent examples of table games in casinos are:
- Baccarat
- Blackjack
- Craps
- Roulette
Numbers games are often seen in casinos, too. Some include games like the lottery, bingo, and keno (although keno is also considered a casino game). These games all involve choosing numbers at random and hoping to match other numbers that are chosen at random.
Poker games and other card games, where you risk your money against the other players at the table, are hugely popular. Some people don't distinguish between poker and casino games, but they're making a mistake.
What makes a poker game a poker game is the involvement of the other players. Other card games work similarly, although some card games are also just casino games.
Sports betting is one of the most popular ways to bet. Bets on horse and dog races are a peculiar subcategory of betting on sports, too.
From a business perspective, sports betting is interesting because of how the house makes money. Sure, you can bet on a football game with a buddy.
Is cafe casino legit. But most serious sports bettors wager with someone who takes care of such things professionally. Such a business is called a sportsbook, and they normally charge $110 for a $100 bet, so they can make a profit.
Horse tracks and dog tracks have a different model. They have prize pools based on a percentage of the money they've brought in, and they withhold a percentage to make a profit.
Individual gamblers are normally playing at a mathematical disadvantage and lose money over time. Some strategies can overcome this mathematical disadvantage, but such strategies aren't simple or easy. They also don't apply to all activities. No amount of strategy can beat the lottery in the long run, for example.
Problem Gambling
Gambling can be fun. It can be profitable for a minority of gamblers, too. But since it affects brain chemistry, gambling can become a psychological problem.
Some people think that you must ingest a substance to form an addiction, but psychologists recognize behavioral addictions, too—addictions to food or sex, would be examples.
More pertinent to this discussion, though, gambling addiction is a real danger to anyone with a tendency to 'overdo' things.
In fact, slot machine games are notorious for having intermittent reinforcement schedules that cause gambling addiction.
Also, one of the biggest signs of compulsive behavior is a lack of ability to enjoy an activity. Once gambling stops being fun, you're in serious danger.
Conclusion
That's a broad overview and introduction to the subject of gambling, but it's a complicated subject with many facets. In fact, you'll never run out of blog posts, articles, or even books to read on the subject.
Gambling is fun and exciting, but it carries elements of risk with it that you might or might not have considered. Sure, you know you might lose money, but you might also become addicted.
Playing video games used to be something kids did to pass the time inside during the summer. As technology has evolved, gaming is now more accessible to everyone—Big Fish Games reports that in 2016, 65% of households now have a gaming device.
Gaming has become a big business: it's projected that approximately $115 billion will be spent on gaming in 2018.
So what's all the excitement about?
Today's gamer can meet people across the globe while fighting zombies or armies, create communities and interact with friends, or even compete and play for large amounts of prize money—if they're top performers.
If you're thinking about getting into gaming, or if you're already playing online but are looking to get more involved, consider the following tips.
Select Your Platform
Choosing the right platform for game play can seem daunting. Start by looking at your budget, and deciding how much money you want to spend. If you want to only play games, a video game console is probably your best option. If you take your gaming more seriously, a PC may be right for you. Consider these advantages and disadvantages to each platform before making a final decision.
PC Gaming
A PC gaming setup—while most popular and perfect for simulation and real-time strategy, first-person games—is more expensive than a gaming console, but you can use it for activities other than playing games.
This option may be a bigger up-front investment, but you can upgrade the system as you grow into gaming, and it also has great multiplayer capability for social gamers.
Consoles
With pricing starting at under $200, consoles offer a huge game selection with no need for any special technical skills. You simply insert or download a game and start playing. Sports games and role-playing games perform well on consoles—better than PC systems.
Consoles have limited multiplayer options and can become outdated quickly. Newer versions are released frequently, and gaming developers keep up with the releases, meaning game selections can become limited in an instant.
Smartphones
Approximately one-third of gamers play on their mobile devices. The convenience of carrying your games with you makes mobile gaming attractive to most people. Candy Crush can help you stay distracted while you're standing in line at the grocery store, but the small screen size limits your gaming experience.
Gaming apps are popular, and new apps are being released daily. It's fairly inexpensive to download the latest popular release and get a few hours of play time in as a distraction if that's what you're looking for.
Choose Your Bandwidth
Another big choice you need to make as you move into or upgrade your gaming experience is bandwidth, the maximum rate at which data downloads from the internet. The better the bandwidth, the quicker your download time.
Faster download speeds are preferred for gaming, but they can get expensive fast. Aim for the best combination of speed and price, and consider how frequently you use the internet at home. If you and your family members or roommates spend hours on Netflix or gaming together, ensure your service plan can support multiple users.
Find Deals
Now it's time for the fun part: shopping for games. While it may be thrilling to wait in line for the latest release of Destiny, your pocketbook will thank you if you use a little restraint and these tips.
Casino Gambling For Beginners
Wait a Week
It may be tempting to be one of the first owners of a game, but being patient can pay off. Waiting a week, or a month if you can make it, can save you some money. Pay attention at your local game shop—chances are they'll drop prices on games sometime after their release.
Buy Used Games
Some stores mark down used games. Look around for the deals and build up your gaming library without spending tons of cash. Note that used doesn't always mean a bargain. Popular games hold their value, so check price tags as you shop to truly get the best deal.
Sell Old Games
Online Gaming For Beginners
If you've grown tired of a game, sell it! The longer you hold on to your game, the less valuable it is to someone else. Stores offer different amounts for different tiers of games (e.g., a game that's six months old will give you more cash back than a game that's two years old), so acting quick and trading in games could get some of your original spend back.
Gambling For Beginners In Vegas
Gaming is an entertaining and social hobby. Choose the right system and a fast internet connection, and you'll be on your way to enjoying hours of play with friends.
