Hello there,
I've been reading the site for a while now and was wondering if I may or may not participate. I believe that I have a small problem, although I guess reading many of the other diaries you may not consider me to have a problem, or that I am deluding myself. In many aspects, I also suppose I don't ft what we would call 'standard' criteria.
I'm 36 now and have been gambling since I was 21 when I started to get the money to be able to. I love the numbers behind gambling and I suspect I could have been an odds compiler had I tried. However in those early days I had zero discipline and had no approach to betting. I was a moderate loser due to mistakes and chasing losses. I also remember making several very stupid errors, some chasing losses, some entering the wrong figures, and so forth.
Since about 2010 I started being absolutely methodical and recording everything. The crux is, I don't intend to give up sports betting. This might sound like fallacy, but since that date to now I have been in profit every single month apart from one month in 2014 when I decided to chase losses and lost. That was hugely poor of me and whilst I can't rule it out every happening again I think it would be very rare, I dislike putting on bets without doing a bit of homework first.
My problem since 2015 or so has been online slots. But not to the extent you may be use to. Many journals I read on here have an 'all or nothing' approach. I ain't really like that, as I tend to stick to smaller stakes. I also can walk away before the damage gets too bad (I tend to quit after £30-50 or so, although I had some very rare tilts that lost over £100). I also don't have debts, far from it, I have a decent level of savings and investments.
So why am I here? My slots playing is getting me down and I can't seem to stop it. Looking back at my records, I usually fire up the slots out of boredom. On average this might be several times a week (a loss tends to see me not play for a while). I'd guess that in an average month I might be overall a couple hundred pounds down, but no more. I know intellectually that over the long run, variance means you will be losing money playing slots but that doesn't stop me from having a go.
It's become a problem for me that I can't shake. The kind of losses make up a significant percentage of my disposable income and my savings aren't progressing as fast as they should. I also feel fairly terrible after a loss. Last night I gambled and although the overall loss was about £25 that wiped out profits on football and I found it difficult to sleep.
I haven't self-excluded yet. This has been for a couple of reasons, one that sometimes I feel like getting a gambling 'fix', without this I might be tempted to go on the FOBTs (which I actually despise) and I see that as a slippery slope. Second, at some books I am in profit with them and I seem to have justified myself giving them something back in casino play as a way of not getting my accounts banned.
Just wondering if it was worth creating some kind of diary on here, or whether it might be viewed with some kind of derision. I dont want to come across wrong, as I am fully aware that some people have it much worse than me.
Stopping gambling is all or nothing. It's not possible for a CG to gamble in a controlled manner long term and the addiction is perfectly capable of switching formats once any given outlet is closed.
If you want to stop completely there's a wealth of advice, tips, experience and support here. If you just want to stop losing this won't be the right place to ask.
It's good that you've decided to share your experiences here. It doesn't matter how big or small your gambling problem is, as long as you identify that it is a problem, then you've come to the right place.
Hi does your slots play generally start in the evenings ? One of the problems with sports betting is that horse racing - this time of year - & UK football - cease in the middle of the evening. Then what ? You may be experiencing a comedown effect after the day's gambling (like a post-drug comedown), & so to avoid the comedown you play slots etc. I don't think that it's boredom - there are plenty of non-gambling related activities that you can do if you're bored - I think that you're addicted to gambling. May I suggest that the only reason your accounts remain open is that the gambling companies see you playing slots etc in your account history - i.e. mug bets - and therefore see you as a mug punter ? After all as you will know if a bet isn't + EV then it isn't worth making. If you are restricting yourself to '+EV' bets (real or imagined) in sports betting but then placing strongly - EV bets on slots they will perceive this inconsistency, see you as a 'mug' & allow your accounts to remain open & unrestricted for a little longer in the hope that you'll tilt on slots & lose all of your sports betting winnings & more. In my gambling days, I had several accounts heavily restricted with sports bets - to pennies - but could still stake absurd amounts on slots or live casino games etc. To paraphrase a quote from an exchange forum - ' £500 on a 7-4 horse ? you can have £1.22 on. £500 on black ? certainly sir !'
Please try to remember that gambling isn't the be all & end all if you're going to do it at all then it should only be a small part of life. If you end up spending hours doing lots & lots of homework in order to find a theoretically-value sports bet then you aren't really living are you ? Maybe try to explore what issues in real life you are avoiding, and therefore use gambling to escape from ? If we take it forward and you spend the next 30 years doing lots of homework & finding value sports bets and winning an average of say £30 / day, never really spending any of it on 'real' stuff & activities as it's your 'ammunition' then what would happen ? You will have accumulated lots of savings, be even more addicted to gambling, then end up old & in a home not having lived life properly at all, with the home taking a chunk of your savings each week. Even successful gamblers like Barney Curley have become disaffected with gambling and have stopped - he's quoted as saying that he feels that 'he's wasted his life'. It isn't really living is it ? Maybe as an experiment try to spend some of your money on normal things be it tech, clothes, weekends away, holidays, home improvements, better food etc etc - i.e. it's real purpose - then you might begin to perceive things differently.
Hi Davey,
You're right. Most of my 'play' comes in the evenings. Which is when I am bored. Very easy to burn through a bit of cash. Looking at it in a more logical way it makes sense for the gaming companies to build in massive highs and lows. They profit from people going on tilts.
I think your second paragraph is very enlightning. I don't spend that long on betting (fully aware that time investment needs to be built into an EV calculation), but yeah I think the financial side of it takes on a massive importance, to the point where you do question spending on things. In a way, most people on here seem to do that as well, money is the overriding factor which drives people here, and not the actual gambling. I doubt many people would declare their gambling as a problem if they were break-even for instance.
I tend to think my life is tied up with gambles. For instance, I have a decent shares portfolio which has generated me money both in dividends and price gains. If we look at this one way, this is not quite the same as roulette - I have researched the companies and bought at a price where I believe the market is offering a discount, but in some ways it is gambling. The value of the portfolio can vary by hundreds in the day (I don't check it every day, after all I'm in it for the long term).
It is thought-provoking in the sense that I am not particularly sure what 'living life properly' means - obviously this means different things to different people. I already take several holidays a year, eat well, buy tech to a limit (I've passed the age when I just bought things for the sake of it).
At the same time, you are right because that is how I feel sometimes. I think what puts me off sometimes is that most of my friends are in similar positions. It's a truth that just because you don't gamble or have no addictions, you will be automatically be happy. But I need to forget about them really and define my own future.
Anyway, the upshot of it is that I haven't played any slots since I posted. Thanks for your input.
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