Your Input Please Did our perception of gambling change?

lotusch

A little mix of Dutch and Irish
Joined
Jun 3, 2013
Location
Dún Dealgan
Hi guys,

I was thinking of putting this thread up a while ago but I never got the time to really do it.
So now I have an afternoon to myself and not working I thought it was time to put my thoughts on this one on the forum.

What I really want to know is,did our perception of gambling change over the years.

I will try and explain what I mean.
When I was 18 years of age and first was able to play slots in The Netherlands I used to go once a week to the local casino/amusements hall.
I would bring 100 Dutch guilders (Converted now in Euro's that would be about 45 Euro).
Most slots at that time would have a jackpot of 200 credits which was 50 Dutch Guilders (€22.50 nowadays).
If on a lucky streak I would play a few hours and walk away with like double the amount I brought in.
So I would have 200 guilders,now about €90.00.
I then had a great night,tons of playtime and money enough to have loads of free drinks in the weekend when going out. :cool:
In the years to come the slots evolved and bigger jackpots could be won.

I found out personally that people including myself started to chase those jackpots and instead of settling for a small profit we would all gamble it away again trying to hit the big one.

Online gambling has the same effect on me.
I can truthfully say I have deposited hundreds of times at online casino's where I could have walked away with a 2x stake profit so €100.00 deposited could have been turned in a €200.00 withdrawal.
When I was 18 I would have been over the moon with that profit.
Nowadays I don't even think about cashing out and most of the times this results in losing the profit&initial deposit and sometimes in additional deposits.
I know for a fact that if I could hit that cash out button earlier my overall lifetime RTP/results would have been much much better.

I am honest to say I do envy players that can play with small deposits and settle for small wins and profits.

I stick to a bankroll I can afford every month so no issues there but what I hate is that I would get paid the end of the month and my gambling bankroll sometimes is gone 2 days after so no funds for the month anymore to play.
And many many times I play at let's say 2 or 3 casino's and I could have walked away with smaller profits but I did not cash out.

I always chase the 1000x + stake wins and I would seldom cash out under let's say 500 Euro which is sometimes insane.
Had many occasions I deposited €100.00 and could have cashed in €450.00 but I wanted to make it €500.00 or more.

And here comes the clue to this story.

We all,including myself,sometimes blame slots for not paying or even blame it on the casino thinking they are rogue or the software is rogue.
But fact of the matter is that we have so many chances to cash out,even smaller wins,but we don't do it and ending up bust and then blaming the slot for not paying...Like LOL.... :cool::rolleyes:
Well the slot DID pay,only not as much as we (greedy ones) wanted it to pay. :D

So yeah,do people recognise this?

Do many people have the same,just not cashing out sometimes while we should have cashed out?
Then blaming the slot or the casino..... :p:oops:

Did we not settle for smaller wins years and years ago and nowadays with all these shiny massive jackpots for grabs we tend to forget we are actually in profit at many sessions but just do not hit that CASH OUT button?

I defo missed a lot of withdrawals that way.

I am man enough to admit it is my own fault and I am really trying to change my play style recently by cashing out smaller profits.
Gives me a good feeling and it also extends my playtime and bankroll for the month.

This is also saying to the accredited casino's that they are fine and that we should not put our losses on their shoulders as they only provide the games and the entertainment and it is up to us,the players to know when to cash out or make sure we don't exceed our deposit limits every time we play.

I love slots,I will always love them and as long as there are great reputable online casino's out there I know I have a safe place to play them.

It is just up to ourselves to not get carried away every time when on a nice profit and hit that withdrawal button instead of losing it all again and them blame the casino's. ;)

Have a good weekend all,


Mark.
 
I must admit I don't play slots in a particularly disciplined way (although I'm pretty disciplined with deposits).
Three reasons for this

1- For me the real fun of slots is that the potential Risk/reward ratio is huge. If I deposit twenty quid I can lose it or turn it into several hundred maybe. Just doubling it wouldn't justify the initial risk.

2- I'm not playing them to make a consistent profit. I do that in other areas of my life. Slots are for me an entertainment with the reasonable possibility of a win at the end of it.

3- A lot of the times I've hit a nice win have been as a result of doing things in an undisciplined way! Example- last month I was cashing out 80 quid from 32 Red, reversed 10 pounds in a moment of weakness and turned it into 400+ :eek2:
I will go with feel a lot of the time. The idea of using a 'rule' to play would ruin the fun for me, and would actually have resulted in me missing the really big payouts.

That's not to say I don't have my own gambling fallacies that i rigidly stick to. (If I hit a free spins round I must go and get a coffee from a fresh kettle before hitting 'start' lol)

But these days I never lose sight of the fact that all popular gambling is done on contrived PRODUCTS which are designed for us to lose. (Slots, BJ, Roulette, Horse racing etc etc)
My perception of this is much clearer than it used to be. Don't get me wrong I want to win, but I won't 'expect' to.

All these things are great fun and in a free society we should have a right to choose how we have fun, but I think if I started to target profits by playing products that are designed for losses, problems would start.
 
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You could have actually posted that story and put my name on it (apart from Guilders..) the only exception being I nearly but not always, cash out small profits when I make them. Actually, once in Holland In the late 80's I was staying in Maastricht with a few friends and I saw an English Barcrest Club slot in a takeaway (ironically the same as I owned a few years back to use as a moneybox lol) where you climb up the feature trail. At a point where the gamble usually 'blocks' you from going further I took a winspin feature and 'won' 36 Guilders only to stand pressing buttons wondering how to get the winnings. I just got my food and left with my pals, and no doubt someone in the queue or the takeaway people took my winnings because I didn't realize they were collected from the owner....:confused:

I'm pretty much the same in that I use my monthly budget up early in the month and if I don't cash out that's it, so I tend to take small profits. The good thing is that if I do take a profit I keep it as I always use the deposit limit function on my 5 sites I am a member of so cannot lose it back if tempted.

But yes, at one time years back I would do the same as you, play until extinction of the deposit unless I won a significant sum. Now I just play my 'double-up quit at 75% rule' whereby if I deposit 50, once it has doubled to 100 I then stop playing at 75% of my peak balance. So, say I hit 160 I will cash out at £120.
Sometimes I make an exception if my deposit is funded by winnings from other sites that month.

Try it out, you'll soon get used to it!
 
I would say its mainly my betsize that has changed through the years, when i started 10 years ago i was betting 2-5 bux at RTG and 2-3 on Microgaming
today its .80 to 1.50 and .60 to 1.50 :) not that i have less money i just find it all more difficult to keep your balance at bay with big bets today :)
 
I would agree with your entire post. I did the same as a kind - going to amusement halls and being delighted if I doubled my £50 to £100.
Nowadays when playing online casinos, I regularly deposit £100, and would have no interest in even withdrawing £300 most times :eek2:
I don't have a specific target in mind, I just carry on playing, wrapped up in the moment. More often than not that excellent profit very quickly depletes and becomes a bust-out.
I've increased my deposit 10-fold and still lost it all on several occasions. But I blame nobody but my own stupid self :mad:

I think the issue is the fact we are never holding the money in our hands. It's very easy to detach ourselves from the notion that those digits on a screen is actually our money that we can have in our bank account whenever we like. I can guarantee if I were holding all those profits in my hands, I would cash out more often than not.
 
In my better sessions, I sit down with a certain actual $ amount I'm aiming for - then I try and calculate session bet sizes vs. typical return for selected slots, factoring in deposit fees and withdrawal fees, and whatever else has an impact on session performance.

With instant lottery tickets, you can plow any winnings back in only if you are still at the ticket vendor - if you walk away, it's easier to cool down and make a decision to cash out at the next chance. I don't play instant tickets, though, because the returns are laughably poor.

At the local casino, if I'm playing with comps, I grind out the WR on minimum bets, and then cash out at the first opportunity - it's free money, so I'll take it.
 
If i put in 100€ and get up to 300-500€ my first thought is; great, some playtime! So yes i agree with your post.

Nowadays i almost only play very high variance games...and the results is that many times i get no playtime at all.

I even play the games i hate...CFTBL and Immortal romance. After every session on creature i tell myself "this is the last time..."

but it never is. When i deposit big and expecting wins, i never win. The big wins always comes when i dont expect it at all.

I will try to make a new rule and always cash out when i have a balance of 500€ on a 100€ or less deposit.
 
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It has changed for me since the days when I was in my 20s going to the local amusement arcade straight after payday (I was paid weekly, not monthly - so I could get away with losing a quarter of my wages after a bit of gambling on payday and not feel skint).

It has even changed since I started slotting online on a regular basis 12 months ago. So often, I would turn a deposit of £50 or less into £300 or more. And then....I seemed to make finding the cashout button the hardest task known to mankind. And I ended up blowing the lot. And then I start calling myself an insane idiotic (and skint!) bellend for half an hour afterwards.

Even on the occasions when I did cashout. I would flush too much of my profit down the toilet before finally seeing some sense.

I have total online losses of £2,050 in the last 12 months. I absolutely know for sure that if I had even half of Chopley's clinical approach to slotting, I'd be in the black. To give just one example, I am down just £75 overall at 32Red since I joined them last September. But if I had been Chopley-smart, I know I'd be up at least £1,000 overall. I simply got too greedy and didn't stop/cashout when the signs of a slump were blindingly obvious. And there is really no excuse. I could cashout at 32Red when my balance was at or near it's peak. And if I really wanted to carry on slotting, I could just go ahead and make a small deposit somewhere else and start again. And it that deposit goes tits up, I still got a nice profit from cashing out at the right time.

Because of those mistakes, I now find myself "settling" for a mere double up on many an occasion, especially if I am on a losing streak. Sometimes I will cashout for a mere £75 profit on a £75 deposit, just to get a morale boost from having had a successful deposit.

Slotting is a hobby that I really enjoy. But I know that if I had more discipline, it wouldn't have been nearly as expensive. And being disciplined doesn't make it any less fun when I win.
 
Thanks for your input sofar guys!
Much appreciated..

Also I wanted to add,sometimes you deposit and hit a biggie in your first 10 minutes of play and you think,ehm I want some game time here too and from there it goes down all the way.. :D
So instead of taking the win we decide to play on,logical imho as you just started your session... ;)
 
I would think the right time to cash out would depend on your initial deposit amount and what you consider to be a decent amount of money. If a player deposits $20 what fun is it cashing out at $40 (2X), however depositing $100 then cashing out $200 is pretty sweet.

My own perception has come full circle. I started out small deposits and small stakes, gradually worked up higher and higher and that seemed to be counterproductive to me. Now, I almost always deposit only $20 or $30 at a time and about 5X is my target. That has been pretty good for me.
 
I think another issue is pending withdrawals. You can deposit £50 into a casino turn that into £150, cash out £120 and leave £30 to play with. When you lose the £30 if you're undisplined like me you'll find yourself reversing your withdrawal and 9 times out of 10 losing the lot. So get those withdrawals flushed.
Then again 3 days ago I reversed a £100 withdrawal and hit a £1500 bonus round in rainbow riches lol. So it's all sooo confusing
 
Even on the occasions when I did cashout. I would flush too much of my profit down the toilet before finally seeing some sense.

I've done this, but I guess I don't consider that 'flushing it down the toilet'; rather, I'm taking advantage of a slot's hotness - I generally set a loss-limit and stop there - that doesn't mean I ALWAYS stop (sadly, lol) but I don't beat myself up about being down - for example - 1/10 of my upper balance.

Slotting is a hobby that I really enjoy. But I know that if I had more discipline, it wouldn't have been nearly as expensive. And being disciplined doesn't make it any less fun when I win.

That's all it is for me - I expect to lose, but enjoy the rare time when I win. It does suck to think about all the stuff you could have done with your losses, but I exercise self-discipline and don't beat myself up.
 
But, most times my experience has been like it was just 2 hours ago.

At least it has been lately.

Small deposit, 75% bonus took.......... minimum bets....... lasted 23 minutes on slots.

Made $100 worth of wagering out of $875.00

Not even any real play time.

So gross!
 
I can easy deposit 10 -20 ten times a day, Years back if I got a 100 quid hit I be jumping threw the roof, If a 100 comes in now of a 25p spin than Its nothing more than a quick yes,

If Im short on my cash than I would with draw small amounts but now I just play it, I would nether of dream of playing it back but yrs ago,

I used to love the machines in pups but agian there all changed now days
 
I couldn't have written this post any better if I had done it myself .. all of it is so true for me. several times this month I made small deposits. 50 to 70 dollars. and 3 times I had gotten to over 800.00. but I needed to wager a bit more. so I kept playing.. then funds went down to 500 and then back up and this kept going on. I got lots of play time. but I kept playing . then funds went down again and I tried to make a come back and never could. it seems when I hit big enough to withdrawl I usually end up losing out completely as I play to meet the terms and cond. ive acutually thought of not taking a bonus at all and hope to get a good run.. and push the withdrawl button as I would not have a excuse to keep playing and lose out. sometimes slots are very tight but at times its like o m g. is this game mal functioning??? I get feature after feature. and of course then it goes dry.. lol
 
While I would totally agree with this whole post and thread.

If your living in the status of NJ or anywhere else in the world. Where eWallets or smaller withdrawals are a possibility. It would be easy to say deposit $20 or even $100, then double it and cash out. Mainly because there wouldn't be the fees that some of us unfortunate folks incur.

Mainly I'm talking if I deposit $20.00. Then I have to automatically pay 1% of that transaction to the bank. Already resulting in an automatic loss of $0.20 before I even get to play. Granted that wasn't the casinos fault, it was the banks. Yet it cost me to make that deposit.

Then if I do hit something. Most US facing casinos would laugh at your for trying to cash out anything as small as $40.00. With some small exceptions of places that allow withdrawals to debit cards and some casinos do offer you a foreign check for smaller cash outs

Otherwise if those aren't options for you, or you don't play at casinos that have such options for small amounts. Most I have seen require a minimum of $50 to cash out, and that's the casino being generous. Then most casinos these days want to charge you a fee for processing the transaction. So let's take the cheapest withdrawal method I have seen. Which is Pay My Card. So to cash out that $50.00 and say you even made a profit. You would need to have $59.00, to have them take that $9.00 as a "fee" for processing your withdrawal.

So now you stuck with having to at least raise a $39.00 profit off of a $20 deposit just for a cash out.

We won't go into any withdrawal or deposit methods and fees. Yet how can a player in the US feel like they can be totally disciplined when the casino forces them to make exceptions to the I just want to double my deposit, then cash out rule.

It's things like this that for sure makes a player in the US feel like casinos are a money pit. Mainly because in order to even cash out, we have to be able to meet certain minimums and make up for certain fees to even get a slice of our money.

Otherwise these types of conversations and topics work well outside of the areas where an eWallet or smaller withdrawals can be done easily.
 
Interesting thread and very true what people are saying.

For me, I started playing fruit machines in the pub as soon as I was old enough to go in them (late 70's) and was delighted if I won £3.00 in tokens which could only be exchanged for food or drink, usually in that particular pub only! I think the stake was 10p a spin maximum.

I then graduated to playing machines in the clubs which paid out a massive, at the time, jackpot of £200. Winning it was some event! Then machines in the land based casinos with £2000 and then £4000 jackpots.

Now, online, I'll think nothing of staking £1.50 per spin or £3.00 if I can afford it and will turn down a £200 cash out.

So yes, my attitude to and perception of, gambling has certainly changed. Ok, there's been inflation over the last 35 years, but back in the 70s I wouldn't have believed I'd be staking the value of the then jackpot on one spin!!

Chris
 
Lot of problem gamblers in this thread.
Myself included.

We should probably do something about that...

Nah.

At nearly 50 years old I only started gambling around 3 years ago, having previously been against it. I started out with bingo at jackpotjoy just depositing £10 which would last a week. I then started on slots and initially would get a thrill out of penny spins. I then tried out 243 way slots and started to lose control a little losing £50 some days (as a low paid carer this is a significant amount of personal disposable income). Realising that I was in danger of developing a problem I've recently switched back to primarily playing bingo but primarily high risk bingo where tickets are 10p with £1,000 jackpots. Expected long-term rtp probably around 60% but in real terms I'm losing less as playing for far longer and the knowledge that a win (should I ever get one) will be significant enough to cash out.
 
Very interesting to read. My "strategy" is quite simple. Since I have the priviledge to cashin-/out without any fees I just set 2 barriers. Zero of course and an upper one. For instance if I deposit €100 I say okay €200 or 0. And its important not to re-deposit if things go wrong. You get quite decent playtime and results. Sometimes if you hit a bonus-feature or something like this it can get €500 with 1 spin (i mostly play lesser lines with higher denomination), thats even better of course.
My perception or gambling habbits didn't change in the past. Since slot RTP get better and everything seems to be more transparent in online gambling its easier then never before to find a serious online casinos, sometimes fair promotions, play a while and cashout.
...And if Mr. Greed visits again then don't let him in. :cool:
 
I started about 4 years ago in online gambling.. I received a promotion from National Lottery here in Quebec. They openned an online casino just for us... Gave me 25$ to try it out... I said to myself why not? it's free. So i began to play some slots and then hit a jackpot of 5000$ with the free money... I couldn't beleive that I really won a jackpot with free money... Luckyly for me On that casino they don't have wagering requirement so i could cash out all my winning... Still my overall RTP there is 200%. I deposited about 4400$ and withdras nearly 9000$. I don't play anymore on that casino since i discover Microgaming slots... They are so more attractive.

On microgaming slots i started at 30p a spin and won a bit. Now i play only at 60p a spin event if i have only my comp point bonus in play... And i fixed a rule to myself... If I double my deposit let say 100 turn to 200 I cash out 100$ and keep the rest to play. As it's casino money they gave me i wont be upset if i loose it all :p. After that if i double it again i withdraw another 100$ and continue until i have no more money ... If I won in one shot let say 400$ i will withdraw and let me 100$ to play...

That way all i have to loos is 100$ or 0$. Oh and i nerver reverse a withdraw. I usually go do somthing else when i loose my 100$ to be sure to not reverse or deposite again. That work for me!
 

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