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GAMBLING

Gambling is often called an addiction. Repetitive behaviors that are beyond the power of the individual to control may be addictions. Similarly, ideas beyond control are obsessions. There is an inability to get away from the slot machine or to get the horse race out of ones mind. The terms drug addict, sex addict, food addict, and workaholic are used freely to describe people who cant stop their activity. Gambling, however, has a special quality. There is always the dim hope that one can break the bank and be rich beyond ones wildest dreams. Hope is one of the things we all need so badly. In this aspect of preserving hope, gambling works like belief in the afterlife. Your lucky number may come up eventually, so keep trying. Poor people are more likely to gamble on the numbers, or Lotto and Bingo, or at the race track. Wealthy people gamble in stocks, bonds, commodities, and leveraged buyouts. Rank saw a connection between human sacrifice and games (Rank, 1932, reprinted in 1989, pp. 294 and 303). At a later stage of sacrifice, a substitute (human or animal) could be found, and an element of deceit crept in; a gambling with fate. This gambling with or tricking of fate was a game of life and death.
The competitive character of games, too, seems to be primitive, though playing to win a prize is a very late development. The original victor in the competition did not content himself with honor alone: what he won was his life, which the defeated rival usually forfeit. (Rank, 1932, reprinted in 1989, p. 303)

We all remember (from the movies) the Roman gladiators and the crowd that turns thumbs down on the loser. The gamble with death has become transmuted into a gamble for money and power in most major sports. If one has any doubt, think of the infamous attack by Tonya Harding and her henchmen on her fellow figure skater and rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Hardings ex-husband and his co-conspirators arranged to hit Kerrigan in the knee with a baton, thus putting her temporarily out of commission. This enabled Harding to get on the Olympic team in 1994. There was worldwide shock, perhaps because a woman was

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involved, and because it happened in a sport usually considered to be nonviolent. Yet gambling is widespread in such sports as football, basketball, hockey, and boxing. Attacks during play, or even off the field, court, or out of the rink or ring, are common. Gambling for money has been substituted for gambling for life or death, but the violent aspects of the Roman gladiator games linger on. Lets not forget that the Greek Olympic games were originally a preparation for war (running, wrestling, the javelin, the discus). Rank (Rank, 1932, reprinted in 1989, p. 304) also describes how Tarot cards and other games foretold of death. Games and fortune telling are linked. We all would like to know what hand fate will deal us. So games, whether sports or card games, are in some derivative fashion a way of dealing with death. While I have not researched the prevalence of gambling in other countries, an article in The New York Times magazine, by Gerri Hirshey (1994, p. 36ff.) gives some astounding statistics about its popularity in the United States.
More Americans went to casinos than to major league ballparks in 1993. Ninety-two million visits! Legal gambling revenues reached $30 billion, which is more than the combined take for movies, books, recorded music and park and arcade attractions The amount Americans spent on all forms of legal wagering last year, $330 billionhas set a historical precedent of its own. (Hirshey, 1994, p. 36)

Hirshey attributes this apparent sharp increase in gambling to several factors. The most important of these is the depressed national mood, triggered by the loss of jobs (especially good jobs), forced retirements, the downsizing of many corporations, and the loss of medical coverage and pension plans. This loss of security makes a gambling fling more attractive. A second factor is the drive of politicians at the state and federal levels to raise money for governmental expenses without raising taxes, which are political poison. Hirshey says the government takes in $25 billion on lotteries each year. A third factor is the selling of gambling via the mass media. Ads for racetracks and gaming and professional sports (where illegal gambling is rampant) are legion. There are billions to be made by corporations that finance the casinos and sports arenas.
Gambling and Wagering Business magazine, in its most recent survey, figured the aggregate illegal take for horses and sports betting books, cards and numbers to be $43 billion. (Hirshey, 1994, p. 37)

The legal take of 30 billion and the illegal take of 43 billion makes an estimated total of $73 billion dollars. This is probably a gross underestimation, since there is a lot of informal betting, such as football pools and card games where money changes hands. If gambling raises the hopes of many, how many people does it damage? If people who are down on their luck in generalthe jobless, the divorced or

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separated, the crippled, the aged, the minoritiesare more likely to gamble, then they are inevitably going to slide further down the slope. If you look outside an Off Track Betting (OTB) storefront, you will invariably see a collection of the outcasts of our society, trying for one more chance. Of course, the government is taking their last dollar to finance schools, welfare, wars, prisons, and road building, and thus contributing to their downfall. You dont have to be a fundamentalist born-again Christian to be against the governments promotion of gambling. And what of the great middle-class of gamblers? Are some of them at risk of self-destruction through gambling?
At Harrahs (a casino), a special employee training program helps spot customers losing control. Estimates on the percentage of the American population at risk for the problem vary between 1 and 3 percent. (Hirshey, 1994, p. 53)

Again, this is probably a severe underestimate. When a customer is so reckless that the casino thinks he will be a troublemaker, or may not be able to pay his losses, the staff may intervene. They are not psychotherapists, however, and profit is their motive. They generally do not plead with clients to keep their money for the house or car mortgage, or to save it to pay their medical bills. Even if we assume that the economic outlook in the United States is not always positive or stable across the socioeconomic range, can it account for the widespread gambling urge? If 10% of our households (perhaps 20% of our population) visit casinos each year, and some unknown but greater number bet on horses, sports, numbers, and cards, it is unlikely that there has been a sharp increase in gambling lately. If you look back at the riverboat gambling, and the gambling (and killing) over cards throughout our history, it is hard to believe that this was due to a contraction of hope. Betting was a booming business just as the westward expansion took place. The nation had never been so brimming with hope and opportunity. You could homestead and get 160 acres free if you farmed it. You could join the gold rush (an opportunity, but also a gamble). The government wasnt promoting gambling then. It just grew by itself. And of course, gambling is not limited to the United States. Gambling is a worldwide phenomenon, and as old as mankind. More basic than economics is the fact that each of us is gambling every day. We gamble with our lives. We take chances crossing the street, working in an office or factory, and eating food. We might be hit by a car, or get injured by machinery in a factory or a mine. We might die of a heart attack brought on by stress in some corporate jungle. Even CEOs are vulnerable to sudden dismissal at the hands of stockholders (especially holders of mutual funds) and through hostile takeovers. Sex in this age of AIDS is a bet with death. Food poisoning reports are in the papers every day, as are stories about environmental contaminants that kill or disable us. Murder by guns and knives is part of the main course on nightly television news shows.

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By betting, by gambling on sports, horses, dogs, or numbers, we take our attention away from our daily gamble with death. We defy death. We court lady luck. We want this mother figure to be good to us. We keep up our hopes of a breakthrough, of seeing our ship come in. In effect, we tempt fate, laugh in the face of our finitude, and hope for life eternal. The strength of this addiction, then, is in its power to conquer our fear of deathto give us an occasional victory over our basic bad luck, which is to be born human and fated to die. To return to Ranks idea, we would all like to see what hand Fate will deal us, but know we cannot predict the future. A game of cards (or any bet) is a small test case of the final hand of Fate. The repetitioncompulsion of gambling finds its power in the repeated efforts to trick Fate, to force her to spare our lives and give us security. Each hand we win gives us hope, even though the odds are against us. Yet the odds in cards, numbers, and even in slot machines are much better than the odds of our living forever. The odds of dying versus living to age 200 are infinity versus zero. No one gets through life alive. The only odds that are minimally realistic are the odds of living long, living well, living creatively, and living happily, and they are almost impossible to predict for any one individual. The most we can get from the Dealer is a helping handthe worst is the Ace of Spades.