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Wow, I've been in about a dozen casinos in my life. I hated every minute I was in them. I had pre-budgeted a specific amount and when it was gone, it was gone.

Wow, I've been in about a dozen casinos in my life. I hated every minute I was in them. I had pre-budgeted a specific amount and when it was gone, it was gone. I could never really place my finger on what it was I disliked about them except that the games bored me. But it was so much more than that. I failed to connect the dots until exactly the moment I read your comment. There is a void, an abyss of loneliness and sorrow. Many of the people there are empty. Lost. An air of depression, desperation hangs in the air. It's like they've lost the will to live and this is their last hope at redemption that fades with every token they drop into the machines. As an empath, this emptiness, this void that you describe being so palpable. That cuts to the very core of how it makes me feel when I enter them and why I spend the entire time longing for the door. It's like the Dementor's Kiss for me. Thank you! Sincerely!

r00fus 9y ago
Casinos are near-perfect skinner boxes [1]. An industry that thrives on exploiting human nature and destroying the subject in the process, little by little. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
- balabaster 9y ago
  What always astounds me when I was in them is that everyone seemed oblivious to it. Their need for instant gratification, the pleasure centre in their brains triggered just enough to keep them ignoring the stress of their losses. Distracting them long enough to make them think they can win it all back and get back on top. It's like playing poker in an interrogation room with a good cop and a bad cop. The good cop comes in enough to make you think you're okay. It doesn't matter whether you're innocent and you only lose a day of work or you're guilty and lose your freedom, you still lose. People go in thinking they can beat the system and the rare few do, but most don't. Overall, the house always wins. That's why the doors are still open and they earn yearly profits of millions of dollars while a whole bunch of their patrons gradually lose their homes and the shirts on their backs.
  - culturestate 9y ago
    Let me check in with you for a second: some people just like to gamble and do so responsibly. Those people - I'm one of them - know that it's unlikely that they'll win, but they enjoy the process just the same. I think about gambling the same way I think about, say, playing a recreational sport. I'm going to lose money (participation fees) but I'm going to have fun.
    - NTripleOne 9y ago
      Yup, that's me too. I have a £30 hard deposit limit for gambling (which comes out of my 'nice things to keep me sane' budget anyway) per month. Maybe I'm just lucky but it's genuinely very rare that I walk away out of pocket - I play by the rule of "hit >2*deposit, withdraw deposit amount and keep playing what's left" and for the most part it works, and I get a couple hours of fun out of it. I know people who'd happily drop £30 a month on junk food or some other frivolous and non-essential purchase, yet they call me an addict. Maybe I am maybe I'm not, I don't know. I do know that I have a good time for a couple of hours and if I'm lucky, I get to walk away with a couple hundred extra in my bank account.
cm2012 9y ago
My wife gets the same feeling as you. She's always really attuned to other people's emotions.
- balabaster 9y ago
  It's a curse you can't walk away from sadly. I hope you treat that compassionately. Many people have no idea just how deeply that affects them. It's not just being attuned to other people's emotions so much as it affects your own emotions. Much of the time it clouds my own emotions so deeply, I find it impossible to untangle which are my own emotions and which are those of the people around me. I have to walk away and give myself time for respite. It can be really hard. I try and surround myself with happy, positive, optimistic people that make me laugh. Sometimes, that's literally the only way I can deal with it. It makes for a good counsellor, but I can't fix everyone's problems and I have to remind myself of that constantly. Everyone is responsible for their own feelings. I am responsible for my own. I have to remind myself of that numerous times every day or I spend all day feeling guilty for not fixing things for everyone. Their journey is not mine. My journey is not theirs. I can share their path, they can share mine, but I am not here to fix everything for everyone. All I can do is be there and show them how they can fix it for themselves. But now we're totally off-topic.
  - cm2012 9y ago
    I read this to my wife, who said, "Are you me?" Thanks for that, she appreciates knowing she's not the only one like that. Stay well :)
    - balabaster 9y ago
      Thanks. She's definitely not alone. There are many like us.
Frondo 9y ago
Oh, yes. You might like reading this book, Addiction by Design: http://www.powells.com/SearchResults?kw=title:addiction%20by%20design http://www.powells.com/SearchResults?kw=title:addiction%20by... It's about how much research and development has gone into making those machines as addictive as possible. Also one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
- balabaster 9y ago
  Great, just what I need, another thing to depress me :D Actually, this sounds pretty fascinating. I will check it out. Thanks
- nwrk 9y ago
  The book is really great - eye opening. Showing all psychology and behaviour systematicaly applied to players to stay / become addicted. Recommended
csa 9y ago
Take 20x the min bet (e.g., $200 to a $10 table) to a craps table, bet the pass line, get free drinks, and cheer like crazy for the shooter. This is a relatively low variance and no skill way to have fun at a casino. The craps table are usually where the fun people are. A few general comments: - Your expected value on a $10 bet is -$0.15. You get maybe 25-30 bets an hour at a full table. It's a very cheap game to play. - Tables are active at different times in different casinos. Evenings are often the best time. Weekends can be good, but sometimes more crowded and/or higher minimums. - Stakes can matter in some casinos. The difference of clientele at a $5 min table and a $10 min table can be noticeable. Casinos with a wider range of min bets will also have wider range of atmospheres. Pick your poison. - Remember that you are responsible for your bet and collecting your winnings (i.e., pulling it in). Dealers sometimes make mistakes, and sometimes people grab the wrong bet (intentionally or unintentionally). This is usually not an issue, just stay on top of it at a busy table. - Bring some $1 or $5 chips to tip the dealers and the cocktail waitresses. Good tipping usually gets you better service.
- balabaster 9y ago
  I know there are loads of people that do find enjoyment in Casinos. So I know my perspective isn't the only one by a long shot. A friend of mine used to be a professional gambler. He stuck to the poker tables... I guess he must've played medium stakes. He did pretty well because you're playing against the other players, so even though the house wins overall, if you're a decent poker player, you can walk away with more than you started every night, and he did and the house still wins. The odds work far more favourably when you're betting against other players rather than the house. He started off without much money in the bank, but he was pretty quickly pulling in enough to cover his rent, bills and never seemed to want for much. It always seemed to me if the game itself could've held my attention longer than 15 minutes, it would've been a pretty easy way to augment my income. The truth is though, after 15 minutes I'm bored with that.
  - csa 9y ago
    Yeah. Poker can definitely be +ev. However, as you mentioned, +ev poker is often not terribly interesting (depends on the game and the stakes). My reply was mainly just to point out that some casinos do have fun areas that are accessible with a relatively small budget with small expected losses in the long term.
losteric 9y ago
Honestly, it just sounds like you don't like gambling and have created emotional preconceptions out of ignorance. What separates responsible video games from gambling? Addiction and using simple pleasures to fill the hole of depression is certainly a problem... however that issue transcends any individual pleasure. People can be addicted to TV, video games, political news, and even books.
- omarchowdhury 9y ago
  Yeah, sounds exactly like how some people on HN have described people at Walmart.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    It sounds like how an honest person might describe me on HN.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Yes, people can be addicted to anything, but that's a false equivalence. Debilitating addiction to video games is incredibly rare in comparison to gambling, and someone addicted to video games isn't normally going to lose their life's savings. We're comparing cigarettes and potato chips. Further, gambling is essentially a zero-sum game. The house always wins, equal to how much you lose, and pretty much every gambler loses besides the one or two rare examples who strike a jackpot the first time they ever play and then never gamble again. In contrast, buying a video game is a transactions both parties are normally expected to benefit from equally, and a video game's single player mode is expected to last at least 10 hours at a minimum nowadays not counting online play that lasts essentially as long as you want, while gambling machines need a constant input of money that adds up to much more over time. Even comparing to coin-based arcade machines, a session on one of those will last much longer for the price, and even in the microtransactions that have become common nowadays you at least end up with something more than the screen flashing some bright lights for a few seconds. So overall on this point, it seems to me like a gambling establishment is necessarily exploitative while a video game publisher isn't.
beamatronic 9y ago
For me it's the smoke. And the $10 minimums. Would love to find a smoke free casino with $1 minimums.
- msie 9y ago
  I believe all the casinos in Vancouver BC are smoke free by law. Don't know about the rest of Canada.
derefr 9y ago
> It's like they've lost the will to live and this is their last hope at redemption that fades with every token they drop into the machines. Consider the Rat Park experiment (http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/) — it seems "psychological addiction" in general is essentially a way of coping with a stressful environment.
- balabaster 9y ago
  I've never seen this before, it's actually a pretty damning assessment of what putting an addict in jail will do to them... it makes them even more addicted than if they found a way to socialize and rehabilitate them. Give them an ability to enjoy their lives and they will gradually self ween. This is quite sad really... I felt terrible for the rats in the cages.
Jach 9y ago
I've been in a few casinos over the last few years (I go with a friend just to have the existential experience, we have yet to play anything, but we then try out their buffet), what strikes me is how much and how little they have changed from what I remember from the few I've been to as a kid or seen in movies. The staple slot machines are still there, they take up most of the floor space, but they're the most depressing. They don't even have physical levers, it's all just repeatedly pressing a button. No coins, everything's on a card now. They all look pretty much the same. There were like 20 different wolf-themed slots. The game variety is so small in terms of objectives and what you can control (or have the illusion of control anyway), the effects even when you win are so dull (many pinball games have a much more exciting "Multiball!" announcement) -- again no spitting out a bunch of coins -- how do people get addicted to that, especially when they're usually losing money? If people claim it's for fun and don't expect to win (as rationally they shouldn't against the house), why don't they just buy an actual game, or download any of the free ones, for a console, phone, or PC, and derive many more hours of entertainment for a much lower dollar investment? If people do it just to enable fantasies of striking it rich, why don't lotto tickets adequately fill that niche? Fortunately casino buffets are generally good enough that I can enjoy the food and put aside such thoughts.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Gambling may be the one vice I am morally against and will not partake in. I won't even buy raffle tickets for charity, I'd rather just give them money.
- mod 9y ago
  That's interesting to me, as I don't consider the choice to gamble or not a moral decision. I consider it a financial decision. Akin to buying something I want.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    It's more that I'm morally against the purveyors of gambling than against the act itself.
taylorbuley 9y ago
I'm a fan of probability... conjoined, disjointed, conditional, decision trees.. the void can be fun, really!
taylorbuley 9y ago
I'm a fan of probability... conjoined, disjointed, conditional, decision trees.. the void can be fun, really!
taylorbuley 9y ago
I'm a fan of probability... conjoined, disjointed, conditional, decision trees.. the void can be fun, really!
fuzzfactor 9y ago
I've always thought of this more for entrepreneurs than casino gamblers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srNvp7w341I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srNvp7w341I There's a place in the world For a gambler There's a burden that only He can bear There's a place in the world For a gambler, And he sees Oh, yes he sees And he sees Oh, yes he sees There's a song in the heart Of a woman That only the truest of loves Can release. There's a song in the heart Of a woman. Set it free Oh, set it free Set it free Oh, set it free Set it free Oh, set it free. There's a light in the depths Of your darkness There's a calm at the eye Of every storm. There's a light in the depths Of your darkness. Let is shine Oh, let it shine Let is shine Oh, let it shine Let is shine Oh, let it shine. Let it Shine Songwriters Fogelberg, Dan

r00fus 9y ago

Casinos are near-perfect skinner boxes [1]. An industry that thrives on exploiting human nature and destroying the subject in the process, little by little. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

balabaster 9y ago
What always astounds me when I was in them is that everyone seemed oblivious to it. Their need for instant gratification, the pleasure centre in their brains triggered just enough to keep them ignoring the stress of their losses. Distracting them long enough to make them think they can win it all back and get back on top. It's like playing poker in an interrogation room with a good cop and a bad cop. The good cop comes in enough to make you think you're okay. It doesn't matter whether you're innocent and you only lose a day of work or you're guilty and lose your freedom, you still lose. People go in thinking they can beat the system and the rare few do, but most don't. Overall, the house always wins. That's why the doors are still open and they earn yearly profits of millions of dollars while a whole bunch of their patrons gradually lose their homes and the shirts on their backs.
- culturestate 9y ago
  Let me check in with you for a second: some people just like to gamble and do so responsibly. Those people - I'm one of them - know that it's unlikely that they'll win, but they enjoy the process just the same. I think about gambling the same way I think about, say, playing a recreational sport. I'm going to lose money (participation fees) but I'm going to have fun.
  - NTripleOne 9y ago
    Yup, that's me too. I have a £30 hard deposit limit for gambling (which comes out of my 'nice things to keep me sane' budget anyway) per month. Maybe I'm just lucky but it's genuinely very rare that I walk away out of pocket - I play by the rule of "hit >2*deposit, withdraw deposit amount and keep playing what's left" and for the most part it works, and I get a couple hours of fun out of it. I know people who'd happily drop £30 a month on junk food or some other frivolous and non-essential purchase, yet they call me an addict. Maybe I am maybe I'm not, I don't know. I do know that I have a good time for a couple of hours and if I'm lucky, I get to walk away with a couple hundred extra in my bank account.

cm2012 9y ago

My wife gets the same feeling as you. She's always really attuned to other people's emotions.

balabaster 9y ago
It's a curse you can't walk away from sadly. I hope you treat that compassionately. Many people have no idea just how deeply that affects them. It's not just being attuned to other people's emotions so much as it affects your own emotions. Much of the time it clouds my own emotions so deeply, I find it impossible to untangle which are my own emotions and which are those of the people around me. I have to walk away and give myself time for respite. It can be really hard. I try and surround myself with happy, positive, optimistic people that make me laugh. Sometimes, that's literally the only way I can deal with it. It makes for a good counsellor, but I can't fix everyone's problems and I have to remind myself of that constantly. Everyone is responsible for their own feelings. I am responsible for my own. I have to remind myself of that numerous times every day or I spend all day feeling guilty for not fixing things for everyone. Their journey is not mine. My journey is not theirs. I can share their path, they can share mine, but I am not here to fix everything for everyone. All I can do is be there and show them how they can fix it for themselves. But now we're totally off-topic.
- cm2012 9y ago
  I read this to my wife, who said, "Are you me?" Thanks for that, she appreciates knowing she's not the only one like that. Stay well :)
  - balabaster 9y ago
    Thanks. She's definitely not alone. There are many like us.

Frondo 9y ago

Oh, yes. You might like reading this book, Addiction by Design: http://www.powells.com/SearchResults?kw=title:addiction%20by%20design http://www.powells.com/SearchResults?kw=title:addiction%20by... It's about how much research and development has gone into making those machines as addictive as possible. Also one of the most depressing books I've ever read.

balabaster 9y ago
Great, just what I need, another thing to depress me :D Actually, this sounds pretty fascinating. I will check it out. Thanks
nwrk 9y ago
The book is really great - eye opening. Showing all psychology and behaviour systematicaly applied to players to stay / become addicted. Recommended

csa 9y ago

Take 20x the min bet (e.g., $200 to a $10 table) to a craps table, bet the pass line, get free drinks, and cheer like crazy for the shooter. This is a relatively low variance and no skill way to have fun at a casino. The craps table are usually where the fun people are. A few general comments: - Your expected value on a $10 bet is -$0.15. You get maybe 25-30 bets an hour at a full table. It's a very cheap game to play. - Tables are active at different times in different casinos. Evenings are often the best time. Weekends can be good, but sometimes more crowded and/or higher minimums. - Stakes can matter in some casinos. The difference of clientele at a $5 min table and a $10 min table can be noticeable. Casinos with a wider range of min bets will also have wider range of atmospheres. Pick your poison. - Remember that you are responsible for your bet and collecting your winnings (i.e., pulling it in). Dealers sometimes make mistakes, and sometimes people grab the wrong bet (intentionally or unintentionally). This is usually not an issue, just stay on top of it at a busy table. - Bring some $1 or $5 chips to tip the dealers and the cocktail waitresses. Good tipping usually gets you better service.

balabaster 9y ago
I know there are loads of people that do find enjoyment in Casinos. So I know my perspective isn't the only one by a long shot. A friend of mine used to be a professional gambler. He stuck to the poker tables... I guess he must've played medium stakes. He did pretty well because you're playing against the other players, so even though the house wins overall, if you're a decent poker player, you can walk away with more than you started every night, and he did and the house still wins. The odds work far more favourably when you're betting against other players rather than the house. He started off without much money in the bank, but he was pretty quickly pulling in enough to cover his rent, bills and never seemed to want for much. It always seemed to me if the game itself could've held my attention longer than 15 minutes, it would've been a pretty easy way to augment my income. The truth is though, after 15 minutes I'm bored with that.
- csa 9y ago
  Yeah. Poker can definitely be +ev. However, as you mentioned, +ev poker is often not terribly interesting (depends on the game and the stakes). My reply was mainly just to point out that some casinos do have fun areas that are accessible with a relatively small budget with small expected losses in the long term.

losteric 9y ago

Honestly, it just sounds like you don't like gambling and have created emotional preconceptions out of ignorance. What separates responsible video games from gambling? Addiction and using simple pleasures to fill the hole of depression is certainly a problem... however that issue transcends any individual pleasure. People can be addicted to TV, video games, political news, and even books.

omarchowdhury 9y ago
Yeah, sounds exactly like how some people on HN have described people at Walmart.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  It sounds like how an honest person might describe me on HN.
jimmaswell 9y ago
Yes, people can be addicted to anything, but that's a false equivalence. Debilitating addiction to video games is incredibly rare in comparison to gambling, and someone addicted to video games isn't normally going to lose their life's savings. We're comparing cigarettes and potato chips. Further, gambling is essentially a zero-sum game. The house always wins, equal to how much you lose, and pretty much every gambler loses besides the one or two rare examples who strike a jackpot the first time they ever play and then never gamble again. In contrast, buying a video game is a transactions both parties are normally expected to benefit from equally, and a video game's single player mode is expected to last at least 10 hours at a minimum nowadays not counting online play that lasts essentially as long as you want, while gambling machines need a constant input of money that adds up to much more over time. Even comparing to coin-based arcade machines, a session on one of those will last much longer for the price, and even in the microtransactions that have become common nowadays you at least end up with something more than the screen flashing some bright lights for a few seconds. So overall on this point, it seems to me like a gambling establishment is necessarily exploitative while a video game publisher isn't.

beamatronic 9y ago

For me it's the smoke. And the $10 minimums. Would love to find a smoke free casino with $1 minimums.

msie 9y ago
I believe all the casinos in Vancouver BC are smoke free by law. Don't know about the rest of Canada.

derefr 9y ago

> It's like they've lost the will to live and this is their last hope at redemption that fades with every token they drop into the machines. Consider the Rat Park experiment (http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/) — it seems "psychological addiction" in general is essentially a way of coping with a stressful environment.

balabaster 9y ago
I've never seen this before, it's actually a pretty damning assessment of what putting an addict in jail will do to them... it makes them even more addicted than if they found a way to socialize and rehabilitate them. Give them an ability to enjoy their lives and they will gradually self ween. This is quite sad really... I felt terrible for the rats in the cages.

Jach 9y ago

I've been in a few casinos over the last few years (I go with a friend just to have the existential experience, we have yet to play anything, but we then try out their buffet), what strikes me is how much and how little they have changed from what I remember from the few I've been to as a kid or seen in movies. The staple slot machines are still there, they take up most of the floor space, but they're the most depressing. They don't even have physical levers, it's all just repeatedly pressing a button. No coins, everything's on a card now. They all look pretty much the same. There were like 20 different wolf-themed slots. The game variety is so small in terms of objectives and what you can control (or have the illusion of control anyway), the effects even when you win are so dull (many pinball games have a much more exciting "Multiball!" announcement) -- again no spitting out a bunch of coins -- how do people get addicted to that, especially when they're usually losing money? If people claim it's for fun and don't expect to win (as rationally they shouldn't against the house), why don't they just buy an actual game, or download any of the free ones, for a console, phone, or PC, and derive many more hours of entertainment for a much lower dollar investment? If people do it just to enable fantasies of striking it rich, why don't lotto tickets adequately fill that niche? Fortunately casino buffets are generally good enough that I can enjoy the food and put aside such thoughts.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

Gambling may be the one vice I am morally against and will not partake in. I won't even buy raffle tickets for charity, I'd rather just give them money.

mod 9y ago
That's interesting to me, as I don't consider the choice to gamble or not a moral decision. I consider it a financial decision. Akin to buying something I want.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  It's more that I'm morally against the purveyors of gambling than against the act itself.

taylorbuley 9y ago

I'm a fan of probability... conjoined, disjointed, conditional, decision trees.. the void can be fun, really!

taylorbuley 9y ago

I'm a fan of probability... conjoined, disjointed, conditional, decision trees.. the void can be fun, really!

taylorbuley 9y ago

I'm a fan of probability... conjoined, disjointed, conditional, decision trees.. the void can be fun, really!

fuzzfactor 9y ago

I've always thought of this more for entrepreneurs than casino gamblers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srNvp7w341I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srNvp7w341I There's a place in the world For a gambler There's a burden that only He can bear There's a place in the world For a gambler, And he sees Oh, yes he sees And he sees Oh, yes he sees There's a song in the heart Of a woman That only the truest of loves Can release. There's a song in the heart Of a woman. Set it free Oh, set it free Set it free Oh, set it free Set it free Oh, set it free. There's a light in the depths Of your darkness There's a calm at the eye Of every storm. There's a light in the depths Of your darkness. Let is shine Oh, let it shine Let is shine Oh, let it shine Let is shine Oh, let it shine. Let it Shine Songwriters Fogelberg, Dan