Posted: Feb 10, 2019 8:17 pm
by Fallible
Thommo wrote:
Fallible wrote:
Thommo wrote:Incidentally, there absolutely are betting systems that work (e.g. card counting blackjack, there have also been more dubious, but reliable incidents in recent years like edge carding or mobile phone analysis of roulette wheels to predict a quadrant). The Martingale just isn't one of them.

If you do count cards, the difficulty is preventing the casinos from banning you. They tend not to like people who win.


Yep. Casinos and betting shops have self-exclusion policies which one can sign up to (and have more holes than Swiss cheese), but if you really want banning, win too much too often.


They are shamefully bad at not enforcing their self-exclusion policies and allowing people to bypass them. It was in the news a few months ago. Deregulated gambling in this country has gone too far and needs to be dialed back a few notches.


As you know, I patch up the casualties of the very badly regulated gambling industry in this country. Or try to. They will, of course, only do what they absolutely have to do, no more. My problem is not with gambling, but with the exploitation of the vulnerable which takes place day in, day out. They don't make their profits from people putting on a £5 footie bet of a Saturday. They make them from people pouring their entire wages into £100 a spin machines or online casinos, and then begging, stealing and borrowing to get it back. Which of course they mostly don't. A large part of my time is spent explaining to intelligent people that these places are there because they're profitable, and they're profitable because do it for long enough and you lose. Cigarette advertising is banned now. There are strict rules on alcohol advertising. Yet every time you turn around, you're confronted by a barrage of gaudy, infuriatingly persistent gambling ads, any time of day, every ad break, and now sponsoring programmes that have nothing at all to do with gambling. It's criminal. People are being driven to their deaths.