Poker vs. Lotto - Aren’t both games of chance?
March 28, 2007
Regarding the state lottery there are millions of people that play the lottery or buy lottery scratchers. Just the other day I was out and I saw a queue of people waiting to buy lottery tickets. Some of them even bought $50 worth of lottery tickets. Are they deliberately looking for the worst return on their money? I mean what are the chances of you winning the lottery? One in a million? One in a billion?
The worst gamblers are those addicted to lottery scratchers. They keep buying and buying lottery scratchers even though they never win everything. The only thing I ever won at scratchers was free scratchers or insignificant amounts of money not even worth mentioning.
The truth of the matter is this: lottery tickets and lottery scratchers are forms of gambling. They are games of chance, but the odds of you winning are very low. Some lottery jackpots may be huge, life altering, but you have little to no chance of winning it. You are better off doing something else with the money you spend on lottery tickets and lottery scratchers. That is why I simply refuse to play the state lottery.
Gambling is a fun, exciting activity, enjoyed by millions of people all over the world. But wasting your money and getting the worst possible return on your money is never fun. In my opinion gambling is about having fun but it should be also profitable. That is why instead of playing the state lottery I choose to play poker. This is because at poker I have a good chance of walking away with a profit.
Let us compare poker and the state lottery. Playing poker is fun, exciting and entertaining, but it also offers a skilled poker player a good chance of walking away with a profit. Poker is a game of skill and experience, knowledge, and a correct strategy will make all the difference. On the long run a skilled poker player will always come out on top.
The state lottery on the other hand offers the same chances to everyone. Skill, experience, and strategy do not matter. Your ticket has the same chances of winning as the next ticket. It all depends on luck, and you must be extremely lucky indeed to win that elusive lottery ticket.
The bottom line is this: both poker and the lottery are forms of gambling. But unlike the lottery, poker is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill. Unfortunately for American poker players, the American legislators refuse to accept this simple fact. The recently passed Internet Gambling Enforcement Act comes to prevent financial transactions with gambling web sites that provide games of chance for real money.
Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader slipped the Internet Gambling Enforcement Act into a port security measure at the last minute of the legislative session. There was no real debate on the gambling part of the bill. After debate had commenced it was simply slipped in right before the final vote of the port security measure.
The bill was considered a “gimmie” because of the security ramifications. Frist took advantage and overexerted his influence as an appeal to the hardcore right-wing crowd right before election time.
Does freedom and democracy mean nothing in America nowadays? How did an overzealous politician manage to pass such a bill with no direct vote, and little to no debate? Did anyone stop to think about the economic ramifications of the bill?
Ironically enough the bill did not manage to prevent people from gambling online. People have already found ways around it.
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