Hard Work has a Future Payoff - Laziness Pays off Now

While I don't condone laziness, it is nevertheless a characteristic quite common amongst gamblers, of whom many were originally attracted to the world of gambling by the promise of financial gain for (ideally) an absolute minimum of effort.

And why not? The fact that we all know this to be quite untrue is of no relevance because the potential returns compared with spending time on something 'constructive' is worth the slight adjustment of a few real world boundaries. The genuine lazy gambler, of course, has hitherto been obliged to engage in the physical inconvenience of actually making the journey to the casino...

As a boy, when I first began to understand what a high street bookmaker was, it seemed that the typical client was male, aged around fifty, working class, smoker, an avid reader of a tabloid newspaper, in the most part a follower of horse racing and - significantly - almost resigned to handing over his cash to the people behind the counter (with whom he would always be on first name terms), yet not expecting to be given much in return.

When I started going to casinos I noticed that the people were quite different, apparently self-appointed gambling crusaders on a mission to beat the 'house' with systems, guile, guts or - if all these failed - snazzy clothes. The friendly banter 'enjoyed' in the bookmaker when nobody's horse came in was a far cry from the condescending looks and sarcastic comments witnessed at the blackjack tables when you were held responsible for your fellow players losing because you asked for another card (or opted against taking another - it doesn't matter, you're still to blame.

Online Casinos

So now that the casino and the bookmaker - manifesting themselves in the albeit two-dimensional form provided by the computer screen - are available in the home, what are we to make of them? And what kind of people gamble online?

Like a busy restaurant's continued custom serving as a good advert for what is on offer, the global clients of online gambling are gathering at such a pace, and bringing their money along, that we shouldn't be too apprehensive about testing out the water. Internet sports betting, for instance, has overtaken even Las Vegas-based sports books, a 2002 US Congressional Report putting worldwide online gambling revenues at over $4 billion (roughly half of this from US residents) compared with less than $2 billion in 2002 in (legal) Nevada. Moreover, had credit card companies not obstructed transfers to offshore casinos and gambling companies the global online market would have reached $5 billion.

Kevin

Published on 07/04/2007