Gambling Addiction discussion

[WagerWitch]

Scooter...

I like you.

And that's hard to accomplish... LOL!

(OK - not true - I like EVERYONE - except those that hurt others.)

You're a very good writer - and I'm going to make the suggestion that you sit down and write your story out - THE GAMBLING one...

And you sell it.

Because while you won't be making a ton of money on it --- YOU WILL - of course give your writing to others... which is where good writing should be... In the hands of others.

[deucebag]

After almost 2 million poker hands played in the last 5 yrs, I say without arrogance and with great humility that I'm somewhat certain I've been exposed to the concept of 'perception bias'.

But I'm telling you that of the 200 mil or w/e and the 13 mil or w/e adults in US and Aust, that the % of those people addicted to gambling is much higher than 1%.

Obviously, the true % will depend on how you define 'addiction' - but no matter how you define it (within logic), that number will be a lot higher than 1%.

Actually, all problem gambling surveys I am aware of show that less than 1% of the population are gambling addicts.

Here is one: http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk...?ContentId=311

Another interesting thing is that there is no statistically significant difference in the prevalence in problem gambling in countries with a very very high availability of gambling (such as the UK), compared to countries with less availability. (This does not mean that problem gamblers don't get in more serious problems with a higher availability of gambling).

While there are some similarities between substance addiction and gambling addiction, there are many more differences.

Generally, gambling is far less addictive than your typical addictive substance. Most people can gamble regularly for years without ever getting problems, while others can't.

Another difference is that gamblers who make the choice of wanting to quit, have a very high success rate compared to substance abusers. Generally, the success rate for gambling addicts who receive professional help is much greater than for substance abusers.

[Jasminebed]

Well, I made a couple of phone calls today, and managed to get some statistics.

3.4 percent of the general population are considered to have moderate to severe gambling problems.

4.8 percent of the gambling population are considered to have moderate to severe gambling problems.

If only the "severe" group is considered, then it is about 1 percent of the general population.

The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre is funded through gambling revenues in Ontario, together with help and treatment programs.

If anyone wants more information on the specifics of the studies, or the methodology, PM me and I will try to get what you need.

[chuchu59]

Well, I made a couple of phone calls today, and managed to get some statistics.

3.4 percent of the general population are considered to have moderate to severe gambling problems.

4.8 percent of the gambling population are considered to have moderate to severe gambling problems.

If only the "severe" group is considered, then it is about 1 percent of the general population.

The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre is funded through gambling revenues in Ontario, together with help and treatment programs.

If anyone wants more information on the specifics of the studies, or the methodology, PM me and I will try to get what you need.

Hi Jazzie,

From the stats it seems that 70% of the general population are gamblers.

BTW, how are things going dear?

[dominique]

Cool, so these are the Canadian stats. Both the Canadian, UK and the US agencies seem to see it much the same way.

The US divides it into gambling addiction and problem gamblers, much the same way alcohol abusers are divided into problem drinkers and alcoholics.

The premise is that an addiction is something that cannot be helped without treatment aiming to totally eliminate the behavior, while problem behavior can be modified by the person him/herself even without completely stopping.

I was for instance a problem drinker for a stretch there in my youth, but for decades now I only drink one glass of wine with dinner (with exception of rare parties) and am perfectly happy. An alcoholic could not do this, it's all or nothing there. (just to explain the difference)

The numbers I quoted were for addiction only. So it chimes...

[JHV]

Well, I made a couple of phone calls today, and managed to get some statistics.

3.4 percent of the general population are considered to have moderate to severe gambling problems.

4.8 percent of the gambling population are considered to have moderate to severe gambling problems.

If only the "severe" group is considered, then it is about 1 percent of the general population.

The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre is funded through gambling revenues in Ontario, together with help and treatment programs.

If anyone wants more information on the specifics of the studies, or the methodology, PM me and I will try to get what you need.

I'm interested in the specifics, if it's not a hassle for you, that is?

I think I disagree with how the 'experts' are distinguishing between addiction and problem gambling.

I know drug addicts who are 100% addicted who live completely functional lives (i.e. doctors, lawyers) - their families wouldn't have a clue they even take hard drugs, let alone aware they are and have been addicted for many years.

I see 'addiction' as being unable to control your actions as they relate to xxx. If you define 'addiction' as being "unable to be modified without treatment aimed at complete elimination of the behaviour"....well, I think that's a little silly (personal opinion). For some months of this year, I was technically ADDICTED to online casino gambling (losing hundreds of thousands in the process), but I knew at any point, I could stop - and I have. Without treatment. This does not mean I was not addicted in the meantime - I certainly was. I just didn't care about the damage until bankruptcy loomed on the horizon as a legitimate possibility.

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Also, I made a mistake of lumping Australia with the US before. In Australia, we have more pokies per capita than any country in the world. Almost every single pub/club/bar has rows upon rows of pokies - I'm not talking video poker machines, these are like "slots" - and, in Australia, most slots have 13% house advantage. The numbers of people addicted to slots in Australia would blow you away - it's actually an issue which has spiraled completely out of control, but the state governments rely so heavily on the huge tax revenues generated by the the pokies industry, that fixing the problem becomes hugely complicated.

The sportsbetting (specifically racing, trots, greyhounds) culture in Australia is also probably the most powerful (of all the countries in the world). It's a national pastime.

To claim that only 1% of the > 18 yr old population in Australia is "addicted" to gambling is just hilarious. I realise US/Canada/UK/Europe are in a different boat - but I still think that 1% figure for those countries is very much lol (especially the UK, where betting shops are on every street corner - and online gambling is completely legal and regulated).

[deucebag]

Also, I made a mistake of lumping Australia with the US before. In Australia, we have more pokies per capita than any country in the world. Almost every single pub/club/bar has rows upon rows of pokies - I'm not talking video poker machines, these are like "slots" - and, in Australia, most slots have 13% house advantage. The numbers of people addicted to slots in Australia would blow you away -
To claim that only 1% of the > 18 yr old population in Australia is "addicted" to gambling is just hilarious. I realise US/Canada/UK/Europe are in a different boat - but I still think that 1% figure for those countries is very much lol (especially the UK, where betting shops are on every street corner - and online gambling is completely legal and regulated).

It would be interesting to hear the basis for your sweeping and definitive conclusions. According to the survey I have linked below, percentage of problem gamblers in Australia is 1.6%.

http://www.problemgambling.sa.gov.au...e_Document.pdf

[spearmaster]

Deucebag, your link is for South Australia, which is one of the least densely populated states in Australia, Adelaide being its largest city.

I haven't seen recent figures for Australia, but from past knowledge I know that pokies are a huge problem. When I moderated a session between Betfair and the Australian Racing Board in 2003 at a conference, I actually studied the figures in advance, as well as visiting a few different locations. As far as I can recall, the percentage of problem gamblers was significantly higher than the number quoted by your South Australian report.

If I recall correctly, that number was somewhere around 8%. This is a huge number - I also recall that Australia was said to have the worst gambling problem amongst Westernized nations.

So while I haven't seen any recent numbers, I'd tend to agree with JHV as far as pokies/problem gamblers are concerned. However, I must disagree with the sportbetting, especially in relation to racing - Japan and Hong Kong are much worse. Put it this way - the Melbourne Cup is televised live in Hong Kong, probably Japan as well - and not the other way around.

edit -> Asked my best friend Google to find some data - the following link is part of research done in Australia in 2007, primarily on EGM (electronic gaming machines - aka pokies) players - if you follow along you will see that 20% of those surveyed were classified as problem gamblers!

Here is the relevant part - Survey Gamblers

and the link to the main page -
Identifying Problem Gambling in Gambling Venues

edit part 2 -> Google also discovered the following information:

Japan has 10% racing tax plus 50% of surplus profits paid to the government.
Japan paid $2.85 billion in "taxes" to the National Government.

Hong Kong's racing tax is 72.5-75% of gross margin, the highest in the world.
Hong Kong paid about $1.8 billion in taxes and charitable donations in the 2007/8 racing season

You can sort of derive the volumes from these numbers. Hong Kong's betting turnover in the 2008-2009 season was roughly $8.5 billion dollars. Japan's betting turnover in 2006 was - wait for it - $28 trillion - and that does not including horse racing organized by local governments, only those operated by the Japan Racing Association.

[JHV]

It would be interesting to hear the basis for your sweeping and definitive conclusions. According to the survey I have linked below, percentage of problem gamblers in Australia is 1.6%.

http://www.problemgambling.sa.gov.au...e_Document.pdf

Firstly, in Australia, there are exactly ZERO 'independent' (and therefore, objective) studies done in regards to problem gambling. The closest you'll get are ones like this one you've linked to, sponsored by? The South Australia state government - for whom, the hundreds of millions of annual tax revenue from the gambling industries clearly creates a conflict of interest and makes the report worthless, in my opinion.

Now, and I realise many will disagree with me on this, if you cut out all the fluff about gambling being 'entertainment' (which it certainly is, if only a super tiny % of your income is spent on it)....the hardcore truth of the matter is that ALL gambling on negative expectation wagers is, by clinical definition, PROBLEM GAMBLING. So, if you're being brutally honest and objective, 99.999% of gamblers in Australia have a PROBLEM with their gambling (especially considering that TAB and SportsBetting agencies run on 16% spreads, pokies are almost all 13% HA, casino game rules range from 2-3% for perfectly played BJ and roulette to over 15-20% for Caribbean Stud and sidebets like Perfect Pairs and jackpots). Lotto games like PowerBall and others have HA as high as 80% or even higher. Well over 50% of adults in Australia buy lottery tickets, which are available at every newsagent in the country. Australia has over 1/5th of the WORLD'S slot machines. We are a nation of 20 million or so.

Now, we can argue all day about where to draw the line on what % of income expended turns a recreational pastime into "problem gambling" - the honest-to-god truth is that 95% of the (otherwise highly educated) adult population of Australia has no clear understanding of the concept of "house edge", and 99.9% would not be able to tell you what % house advantage is on the wagers they are making. If they truly understood, they would be nauseous - many are just not intelligent enough to grasp the concept, others have no real interest either way, others might understand the concept but consider themselves *lucky* and therefore unaffected by the mathematics. 99.9999% (no exaggeration) simply do not truly understand the nature of variance - 99.99% of successful online poker pros don't truly understand the nature and power of variance.

I say all this to explain that the people doing these studies, the "experts" if you will, aren't nearly intelligent enough to even begin to create objective and intelligent studies into the issue. I've had conversations with "experts" of this nature (who VERY much were objective and interested in what I was trying to explain to them - but the simple fact, and I apologise if this sounds arrogant, is that they simply aren't intelligent enough to comprehend this kind of stuff - shit, I was a mathematics geek and studied statistical modeling and sample size confidence intervals at university level, and I couldn't even become close to understanding the true nature of these issues until many years into a hugely successful professional gambling career).

Now, the study you've linked to is from 2005. We're now in 2009 and the internet gambling explosion during the last 4 years makes this particular study obsolete to the point of hilarity (obviously).

The number of people represented by this rate was approximately 18,000 adults (range 16,000 to 20,000), of whom 5,000 are high risk gamblers.

This is one of the "key findings" on page 3 of that report. This "finding" is so ludicrous, I'm going to struggle to even read further. In my first year working at Jupiters, I saw WAY more than 5000 high risk gamblers come through that place, and we're talking about a single tiny land-based casino not even located in the state capital.

Frequent gamblers (respondents who gambled every week or fortnight) were asked about issues that indicated problems with gambling, and about the impacts that gambling may be having on their life.

Do I really need to point out the ludicrous nature of this method of "studying" an issue? Please tell me I do not. Please tell me that you understand that surveying gamblers as to how they personally felt about their gambling activities will give you results so redundant, the "doctors" and "experts" who conducted this study should be ridiculed.

I could go on and on, but the key issues I believe I've covered.

Cliffnotes:

State and Territory governments in Australia derive > 10% of their annual revenue from gambling taxes. All studies commissioned by government departments are, by this very fact, impossible to classify as 'objective'.

The number of people in Australia who truly understand the somewhat complex key issues (an understanding required to even attempt such a study) is probably less than 1000 people. This is a serious estimate.

All gambling that is negative EV (expected value) is, by definition, *problem* gambling. Clearly, if you make $50,000/annum after tax and wager $5/week on a lottery ticket, you do NOT have a gambling problem. But you have to understand the first sentence of this paragraph. Negative expectation gambling, despite efforts by the gambling industry to label the activity as 'entertainment' or 'leisure activity', is problem gambling. You are handing money to another party on every -EV bet.

All the available "studies" (of which you can probably guess my opinion/s as to their 'value') seem to be conducted in 2005 or thereabouts. The last 4 years has seen massive explosion in internet/online gambling, to levels that would blow the collective minds of interested non-industry involved persons.

Surveying gamblers for their responses and personal opinions on gambling is so ludicrous a research method, I'm torn between laughter and anger. Any further expansion on this point is redundant.

-------

A crude, but far more accurate, method to get a rough idea of the levels of problem gambling would be to compare per capita gambling expenditure (assuming we can even rely on the accuracy of these figures, knowing that they are delivered by non-objective sources) with average per capita income.

I'm too lazy to spend more than a few minutes online for a recent per capita number, but a 2007 BBC article has the following numbers:

Since 1990-91, real per capita expenditure has increased from $A470.60 (US$360) to $A931.64 in 1999-2000. The figure now is likely to be much higher.

1991? lol. "now likely to be much higher?" lollllllllllllllllllllllllllollercaust. Ah, BBC, you crack me up. How does BBC hire a journalist who doesn't understand the concept of CPI or...um...the INTERNET as it's developed from 1991 to 2007. The world makes me laugh at times.

Oh, here we go - a more recent figure on per capita expense from the UK Telegraph:

The country has an estimated 300,000 "problem gamblers", the highest level per capita in the world, who lose an average of A$12,000 a year on "pokies" - glorified fruit machines promising hefty payouts.

On pokies. This number is for pokies only. Just pokies people. Pokies in Australia account for probably 30% (guess only) of gambling expenditure.

After-tax average salary in Australia is something like $20-30,000. And this number is heavily distorted by the "80/20 rule". Ignoring that, after mortgages, utilities, vehicle/transport costs...the average 'expendable' amount an Australian adult has is probably something like $10,000/year (to spend or save).

I'll end this post now, but I hope I've done a decent job of explaining that I'm not talking out of my ass - I kinda know this shit. And it's kinda fucked up, to be honest.

That 1% number. How do I feel about it? I guess...."lol?"

[deucebag]

....the hardcore truth of the matter is that ALL gambling on negative expectation wagers is, by clinical definition, PROBLEM GAMBLING.




Do I really need to point out the ludicrous nature of this method of "studying" an issue? Please tell me I do not. Please tell me that you understand that surveying gamblers as to how they personally felt about their gambling activities will give you results so redundant, the "doctors" and "experts" who conducted this study should be ridiculed.

All gambling that is negative EV (expected value) is, by definition, *problem* gambling. Clearly, if you make $50,000/annum after tax and wager $5/week on a lottery ticket, you do NOT have a gambling problem. But you have to understand the first sentence of this paragraph. Negative expectation gambling, despite efforts by the gambling industry to label the activity as 'entertainment' or 'leisure activity', is problem gambling. You are handing money to another party on every -EV bet.

but I hope I've done a decent job of explaining that I'm not talking out of my ass - I kinda know this shit. And it's kinda fucked up, to be honest.

That 1% number. How do I feel about it? I guess...."lol?"

How do you think gambling addiction is diagnosed? By asking the patient about their gambling habits and how it impacts their lives (or as you put it "how they feel about their gambling").

When you come from the POV that all -EV gambling is problem gambling, then I don't see any point in discussing this. Almost every pastime costs money and is -EV, but that does not in itself make them societal problems.

To me, and the professional community, problem gambling is gambling that causes financial and/or social problems for the gambler. That people in your view waste their money on -EV activities is not in itself a social problem that society needs to concern itself with, IMO.