To the folks mentioning every game under the sun with a random element and calling it "gambling", that's wrong. Gambling involves random events, of course, but

To the folks mentioning every game under the sun with a random element and calling it "gambling", that's wrong. Gambling involves random events, of course, but not just random schedule. The payout being random is what makes gambling gambling. People don't spend hours at the slot machine because every once in a while they get a giant jackpot. They spend hours because relatively frequently they get some payout, but any given payout may be small or large. Same with the lottery: people don't keep playing it because of that 1 chance in a few hundred million of getting the (as of this writing) $95 Million (Mega Millions) or $285 Million (Powerball) . People play the lottery every week looking for that $2 or $5 payout, or on good weeks a $20 or $50.