{"id":5675,"date":"2023-03-03T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-04T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5675"},"modified":"2023-03-01T08:26:41","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T15:26:41","slug":"gambling-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5675","title":{"rendered":"Gam(bl)ing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I wrote about watching our son Mark \u201cScale the Strat\u201d in Las Vegas, becoming the US National Champion<\/a> stair racer. Pretty exciting! We rounded out our visit with a trip to the mind-boggling Hoover Dam<\/a>, two fantastic shows, and a nice dinner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only tough part was watching people gamble. As I walked through casinos many times in four days, I was reminded of something I read in National Geographic as a young boy. The caption under a picture of people playing slot machines in Monaco was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gamblers, win or lose, are seldom happy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It remains true. I saw no smiles among the people sitting at the machines. We saw one lady crying. June and I wish we had had time to check on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mathematician friend of mine, when he learned we were in Las Vegas, wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t gamble. It doesn\u2019t pay in the long run.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s right. The house is going to take 5 – 10% of all money wagered. The rest of it is spread randomly around those gambling. Mathematically, your expected return on a $100 wager is $95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make no mistake: it\u2019s Gambling<\/em>, even though the industry likes to drop the \u201cbl\u201d and calling \u201cGaming<\/em>,\u201d and it\u2019s not good for you no matter how much our culture likes to normalize it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent article on BreakPoint said that some research indicates that 50% of the money wagered comes from people with a gambling problem. But, not to worry because there is a National Gambling Problem Hot Line (funded by the gambling industry – what could go wrong?). Breakpoint<\/a>, February 28, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote about sports betting<\/a> at the beginning of the football season. At the time, Alabama was a lock to win the national championship, favored to win all their games by double-digits. Guess what? They lost two of those games and didn’t even make the final-four playoffs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6.9, 10, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, \u201cI will never leave you nor forsake you.\u201d (Hebrews 13.5, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I wrote about watching our son Mark \u201cScale the Strat\u201d in Las Vegas, becoming the US National Champion stair racer. Pretty exciting! We rounded out our visit with a trip to the mind-boggling Hoover Dam, two fantastic shows, and a nice dinner. The only tough part was watching people gamble. As I walked through … Continue reading Gam(bl)ing?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1tx","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5675"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5677,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675\/revisions\/5677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}