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IF YOU'RE PREPARED TO LOSE (Investigator 86, 2002 September)
If you gamble against the odds you'll probably lose. This is a mathematical truth that some people try to ignore. One unemployed
gambler
with a wife and four
sons gambled away his Centrelink benefits, then borrowed from a friend
and gambled that away, and then robbed a supermarket. He was caught and
jailed for 4¼ years. (1)
The odds are
against you
in casinos, lotteries,
horse-racing and electronic gaming machines. The odds have to be
against
you because your losses pay the wages of people running these events
and
their taxes and for the infrastructure.
 <>If you get
addicted to
gambling – which may
happen if you win a few times – you may eventually lose so much that
you'll
steal to keep playing.
A Law clerk, 48, stole $450,000 from the law firm's accounts and its clients to fuel her gambling. (2) A Melbourne bank officer, 44, lost at gambling, defrauded his employer, the National Australia Bank, of $1,200,000 and was jailed for five years. (3) An estimated
8,000 -
10,000 of South Australia's
21,000 gambling addicts have engaged in criminal activity to obtain
money
to keep gambling.
Consider a
simple
dice-rolling game where
we add up what each person throws and the highest total after we've
each
thrown twenty times wins. But here's the catch. Whenever you
throw
a six it counts as a four, but when I throw a six it remains a
six!
Would you play by such rules – perhaps putting up $50 per game?
Common sense tells you that you'll lose most of the time. The mathematically most likely result after twenty throws each, is a total of 70 for me and 63 for you. My advantage
over you by
the above rules
is approximately equal to the advantage the electronic gaming machines
have over you.
That’s why South
Australians lost $473 a
head on gaming machines in the 2001-2002 financial year – a total of
$606
million. Of this $394 million went to the hotels and clubs and $212
million
went to the State Government as taxes. (4)
A kit to
help 2,000 SA
doctors identify and
advise patients with gambling problems was recently launched. (5)
[All references from The
Advertiser:
(1) 2002, May 25; (2) 2002 August 7, p. 9; (3) 2002, August 3, p. 11;
(4)
2002, August 9, p. 3; (5) 2002 August 7, p. 10]
BS
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