by Natalie Valios
My name is Natalie and I am a social gambler. This revelation came about during research for a feature on problem gamblers. Obviously there’s a huge divide between problem gamblers and social gamblers, but still the latter label was never one I’d considered attaching to myself before.
I bet you didn’t either, but add up the times you’ve been horse racing, dog racing, or bought a National Lottery ticket this year, and you could be surprised – especially as these are just a few gambling examples.
As part of my research, I visited a casino for the first time. It was a fascinating, if slightly depressing, experience. I went in knowing how much I was prepared to lose, and with a determination not to be tempted to carry on whether I was on a winning or losing streak, but this wasn’t the case for those sharing the roulette table with me.
In the time I spent £10, one woman had blown three crisp £50 notes as though they were Monopoly money – and still came away with nothing. While I enjoyed myself treating the whole thing as a bit of fun, fellow gamblers looked thoroughly miserable as they wrote down the winning roulette numbers in a desperate bid to see a pattern emerge that would send them on a lucky streak.
One guy next to me had a big win – probably about £10,000. Chatting to him afterwards it was clear he gambled regularly, on his own, and on a big scale. He was keen to share his words of wisdom on chaos theory. It quickly became apparent that he was firmly in the delusional stage of believing that there was more behind winning than random luck.
Never one to buy into this hypothesis before, the trip to the casino only served to confirm that when the chips are down, it’s all down to luck – or lack of it.
When does social gambling become problem gambling? If I was asked whether I gambled I would say no. Then I would add: "Ah, I do the national lottery, though." Then another thought would pop into the grey matter: I do the national lottery every week; twice a week, in fact. And woe betide my state of mind if I forget to do it because, big mistake, I use the same numbers each time and will need to satisfy myself that they HAVEN'T come up "in this game called lottery", as they say on the BBC1 programme (I don't watch TV either). Take all this into account and it seems that this social gambling thing is taking on all the attributes of a problem - I'm even making excuses for the habit.
Which shows how it is so easy to be sucked in. And why the government must be congratulated for having the good sense to scrap its plans for a super-casino, dressed up as a lifestyle option for the people of the North West. Lucky North West, I say: it could have been you.