I have only ever bet on sports once (a fantasy football thing at work that I was required to join), and I was very lucky because I lost and had zero fun in the process. I don't like sports anyway, so the odds were never very high, but the fact that I didn't enjoy losing $50 made it so I've never had the temptation to do it again.

I think about the alternate universe where I won and started betting more a lot; sort of a "there but for the grace of god go I" situation.

I'm the same.

I am very very careful around activities and substances which could become addictive, because I know from benign life experiences that I sometimes lack the self control to stop.

It would probably be fine but there are no upsides risking it.

That and ever since my undergrad statistics class I hate the thought of playing games which are staked against me from the beginning. The thought of betting or gambling feels like voluntarily signing up to be swindeled.

I don’t like gambling, but I love sports. I will very occasionally engage in “emotional hedging”, where I bet AGAINST the team I want to win.

If my beloved team wins, I’m ecstatic and don’t really care I lost $50. If they lose, well, at least I have $50.

I tried this but I'm also hopelessly superstitious so I could only do it once. But I think it was I who ruined Arsenal's chance to win the prem when Leicester took it

In the UK I've seen lots of "first bet: win or your money back", or "make another bet free" sign-up deals. They're poorly disguised dopamine sharks.

Well aside the organised criminal element that goes hand-in-hand with legal gambling, it destroys people's ability to make rational choices.

But yes, I'm also lucky enough to have never won.

I won nearly a grand on one of these. Pretty blindly. I came out on top after a year of using the platform but not by much. It's definitely predatory. I'm fine with it being legal as with drugs it's going to happen either way but the promotions should go.

I think —as with drugs— if we are going to allow it, it should be taxed enough to provide cessation services, counselling, rehab to anyone who needs it.

Even then it's hard to ignore that both these things destroy people with precious little informed consent. If you're the sort of person who gets hooked, you're stuffed.

Was it a fantasy league? I guess it’s gambling, but not what most people would consider sports betting. I know lots of people who play in a fantasy league with friends every season and do no other gambling.

Drafting players and then fielding a team every week for a season can be fun if you like the sport.

It was a fantasy league, and yes I am sure if you liked football it could be fun to figure out players and the like and having a small amount of money on the line might even make it a bit more exciting.

The problem for me is that I had no idea with regards to anything about football, so my picks weren't radically different than a random number generator, and unsurprisingly I lost. I had absolutely no fun in the process and I would have rather spent that $50 on a video game or something.

It’s unfortunate you didn’t have fun. We often do leagues at work and it’s great team building. People have won who just used the auto draft feature and a woman won one year who picked all her players based on uniform colors.

You don’t have to know much about football, and it gives some common ground for small talk.

I think a large part of it was the fact that it was mandatory, and I didn’t like my coworkers very much, but I don’t have fun with the selection process.

I signed up for one of those first time deposit offers and made a bet on the Super Bowl once, as I was going to a watch party and find it to be unbearably boring, so I figured this would make it somewhat interesting. I ended up winning, I think I tripled my money when including the bonus. Even though I won, I had zero interest in ever betting again. I got so much spam texts and emails from that Sportsbook over the next few years trying to get me to bet again it was insane.

My brother jokes and says I am in the top 1% of sports bettors now

Yes but your local bookie is also not sharing revenue with the state. This is purely another of funding states revenue at the cost of vulnerable.

So what? those malicious advertising practices should be illegal. not just for sports betting but for any website or business. Gambling is a person's natural right.

If gambling should be legal, then so surely should malicious advertising right?

Predatory advertising, gambling, they both prey on people.

Cards on the table, I think both advertising and gambling should be heavily controlled.

In a capitalist system, gambling has a lot of negative externalities that go far beyond the individuals participating. It must be carefully controlled. In some countries like Monaco, citizens can’t gamble, but foreigners can do so freely.

My position is that every country should do what Monaco is doing, except if a citizen want the foreigner treatment, they can abandon whatever social benefits that would be harmed by gambling and be allowed to gamble or partake in activities that harms themselves only.

Many developed countries are struggling with birth rates for example. Should that be regulated? It is harming countries much more than gambling could ever have. The whole right-wing resurgence happening across western democracies is a direct consequence of lower birth rates demanding offshoring and immigration.

Yeah let's do some forced births!

Reminds me of some proposals to pay people for having kids.

The kind of folks who will take that offer are more likely to be terrible parents.

Thanks for understanding the absurdity.

Let's also legalize crack and heroin. Getting addicted to fent is a person's natural right.

Yes, I sincerely agree. But the person that sells them the poison has to make sure they are of sound mind and fully understand the consequences. So long as a person is well informed and of sound mind, I don't see the problem. I'm even for putting their names in a registry so that they won't receive any social welfare benefits in the future if they go down that route. But outright jailing people, that's insane. Imagine eating something unhealthy and suddenly you're serving 25 years in prison for it. What is happening is only mildly less absurd.

Oppression is not the only alternative to legalization. Just because your country's policy on drug addiction is very misguided and does more harm than good doesn't mean the solution is to legalize everything.

Anyway, my point, that you seem to have completely missed, is that some rules that Americans would reflexively dismiss with a thought-terminating cliche like "nanny state" are in fact necessary. You wouldn't want the road to be a free for all, would you? Well, I don't want psychological warfare to be legal and used to trick my neighbor into losing vast sums of money to online platforms. Poor, addicted citizens make the country worse for everyone.

Also, "But the person that sells them the poison has to make sure they are of sound mind" made me laugh. When has it ever been in the business owner's interest to vet his clients? Legalize fent and in a year, half the superbowl ads will be selling you drugs in rainbowy attention-grabbing displays of decadence.

False equivalencies. Roads are shared, gambling is not. psychological warfare is against the masses and is being done under deception against targets, gambling is not, and despite that, it is your neighbors problem,not yours in that example.

The bit about poor addicted citizens (if it actually is the cause,instead of welfare and similar things), it sounds like your priority is improving the economy despite its effects on people's rights?

> When has it ever been in the business owner's interest to vet his clients?

When not doing so could mean serious consequences, like capital punishment or life in prison.

>> So long as a person is well informed and of sound mind, I don't see the problem

Someone high on heroin or going through withdrawal from heroin is not of sound mind.

But they were of sound mind before their first hit of heroin, were they well informed then? if not, punish the seller not the user.

Why is gambling your natural right, but advertising not mine?

advertising is your right, so long as the venue of advertisement is owned by you or you get the owner's permission. What isn't your right is being deceptive and fraudulent with your advertising. It is just free speech otherwise. I'd say you have an even stronger right to advertise than to gamble, just not advertise deceptively.