The Secrets Of The Gambling Industry

The Gambling Industry is filled with secrets.

Most of us take gambling as a simple fact of life. Casinos. Las Vegas. Sports betting. Slot machines. Roulette. Poker. These things have always been there.

But with the rise of new technologies like the internet and the smartphone, the gambling industry has changed.

The online gambling industry is now worth $565 billion worldwide. Who’s taking all this money? And how?

Who’s winning? And who’s losing? Well, those are easy questions to answer. The winners are casino owners, bookies and the owners of online gambling companies. As for the losers? Well, that’s almost everybody else.

Everyone knows that the house always wins, yet millions of people continue to hand their hard-earned money over to gambling companies. Gambling is the ultimate demonstration of human irrationality.

In this article I will explain:

Why Gambling Is Idiotic
How Online Gambling Has Changed Everything
Gambling Advertising
How Casinos and Slot Machines Are Designed
How Gambling Addiction Ruins Lives

WHY GAMBLING IS IDIOTIC

Before I explain more about the secrets of the gambling industry, we need to get something out of the way: gambling is idiotic. And this is why.

See that 0? That 0 means that putting your money on either Red or Black gives you a less than 50% chance of winning. This is what’s known as the “House Edge”.

Every single time you gamble, no matter whether you play at the casino or on your smartphone and no matter which game you play, there is always a house edge. If you play for long enough, the house will eventually take all of your money.

The very fact that the casino turns a profit is proof that people lose the majority of the time. If the house lost more than it won, it wouldn’t be in business in the first place.

Here is the average house edge for various casino games:

BlackJack: 0.42% – 1.5%
Bacarat: 1%
Roulette: 5.26%
Slot Machines: 5-10%

As for sports betting, the bookies are the ones who decide the odds on any particular game. They spend all day, every day, calculating which odds will bring in the most profit. It’s highly probable that you don’t know more than the bookie (even if you think you do). After all, you’re at an informational disadvantage; they have all of the data — you don’t.

Your “hunch” about a football match is unlikely to outsmart the bookies.

We’re not equipped biologically to understand odds. The difference between 1/100 and 1/1000 is quite difficult for us to grasp.

A small number of true professional gamblers can make a profit through gambling. Poker can be profitable as you are taking money from other players rather than attempting to take money from the house. Others use techniques like count-counting or matched betting, and a very small number of people actually have more knowledge about a particular team/sport than the bookies.

Assuming you’re not a professional gambler who treats it as a full-time job and acts intelligently, then gambling for you is idiotic. Also, even professional gamblers are playing a dangerous game as it’s incredibly easy for anybody to fall into a gambling addiction (more on this later).

Having a profitable system is how people become rich (like running a profitable business). And gambling is not a profitable system. You may be able to win big once or twice, but it’s a system that will not be profitable over a long period of time. In short, gambling is for suckers.

Despite the fact that gambling is idiotic, every single day millions of people around the world engage in it. Infact, new technology has given birth to an entirely new monster.

HOW ONLINE GAMBLING HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING

In the past, gamblers had to head to a casino or a bookie. No longer. Gambling is available in your pocket. Anytime. Anyplace. On a device that is more or less required for daily living in the modern world: the smartphone.

Gambling is now instantaneous, discreet and convenient. In 2022, the gambling addict is living in an absolute nightmare. An alcoholic can remove all alcohol from his home and avoid venues where it is sold. The gambling addict has no such option.

Not only that, but gambling addicts will be targeted with advertising every single time they go online. In fact, after doing research for this article, I found myself hit with adverts for gambling companies over and over again. And the Youtube algorithms started hitting me with “big win” videos.

And I started being targeted with gambling ads on Youtube videos.

It’s almost as though the internet itself is conspiring against gambling addicts to encourage a relapse in their addiction.

Of course, it’s not a conspiracy. The algorithms on social media analyse your online behaviours and determine that you’re somebody who is drawn to gambling. It then directs gambling content in your direction as it knows you’re likely to click it. The algorithms want more clicks and more time spent on the platform, nothing more.

Online gambling today comes in many different forms. Online casino games are available with live dealers dealing cards.

*Twitch streamer Adin Ross gambles live*

And you no longer have go to a casino to play slot machines.

*Streamer Trainwreckstv plays online slots*

There are endless numbers of different styles of games online available to play.

Popular online crypto-gambling game “Crash”

Worse still, with the invention of cryptocurrencies, “crypto casinos” can now operate online completely unregulated. These crypto casinos, like Stake.com, can base their online companies in countries like Curaçao in South America with fewer regulations on gambling and get away with practices that would never be allowed in most countries.

Crypto casinos target young audiences through the use of streamers on websites like Twitch.com. Twitch streamers are paid absurd amounts of money in order to gamble in front of their online audience.

They play on-stream, in front of a young, gullible audience and play for hours and hours, occasionally hitting insane wins. What they don’t tell their audiences is that they’re not gambling with their own money. Online casinos will provide the money they’re gambling with in exchange for free advertising of their online casinos.

These streamers are often allowed to keep a % of their winnings, and lose absolutely none of their own money. This allows them to gamble in an incredibly reckless way, which normalises reckless gambling in the eyes of their audience. Throwing down $1000 on a bet becomes normal for their audience, who then copy their behaviour.

Even Drake was paid by an online casino to gamble online in front of his audience. At one stage, he had won an insane $20 million, before going on to lose most of it by the end of the stream. Having Drake gamble in front of a young audience (including teenagers without fully developed brains) will encourage many of those young people to try online gambling themselves, and later develop a gambling addiction.

SPORTS BETTING

Millions now make sports bets from their smartphones while watching sports events. It’s become completely normal for football fans to place bets on their phones while standing in the crowd at a football game. The AFL (Australian Football league) now relies on gambling to keep the sport going.

Bookies use fractional odds like 1/11 or 17/2 rather than a simple percentage because it makes it harder for you understand your chances of winning.

Sports betting has always been around, but three new technologies have dramatically changed the lay of the land: 1. Artificial Intelligence 2. Big Data 3. Account profiling. Using these three new technologies, gambling companies have created insane profits over the last few years. For example, Bet365 made profits of 2.98 billion in 2021.

Sports betting apps now use artificial intelligence to track the behavior of gamblers. As soon as you sign up to the app, your behaviour is analysed. The app will immediately begin collecting data about you: Age, sporting interests, annual income, geographic location, average deposit, betting ability etc.

Very quickly, the app will know if you’re an average fool or a wise professional gambler. If it detects that the player is gambling recklessly, the app will continually encourage the user to return to the app. The AI will watch your gambling behaviour to see if you act in a similar way to other gamblers who have lost money.

If the AI puts you in the “fool” category, you will start receiving free bets, marketing emails, letters in the mail and constant notifications on your phone.

However, if the AI detects that the user is using a gambling strategy that might actually be effective (a professional gambler), then this happens:

They will have betting restrictions placed on them or they will be banned completely from the platform. This is the modern-day equivalent of getting beaten up and thrown out the casino.

Is this unfair? Of course it is. As a general rule, you can assume the entire gambling industry is conspiring against you to make sure that 1. You don’t win money from them 2. You become addicted to gambling. And they will use every sneaky, manipulative and sociopathic technique they can to achieve those goals.

GAMBLING ADVERTISING

Why do gambling companies always offer free bets like this? Because a new user who later turns into an addict is potentially worth £1000’s. Even the average non-addict gambler still usually loses more than they win. They offer free bets because it makes them profit in the long-term.

*Celebrity Football manager Jose Mourinho endorses Paddypower*

Because the gambling industry turns such enormous amounts of profit, they can afford to hire some of the most well-known celebrities to endorse their brand. Here, Jose Mourinho is chosen because of his reputation as a shrewd, intelligent businessman with large amounts of wealth.

Wearing a smart business suit, Jose Mourinho’s appearance in the advert leaves the impression to the audience that gambling with Paddypower could be some kind of “smart business decision” (which of course, it isn’t). An unspoken assumption presented by the advert is that Jose himself bets with Paddypower and profits from it (which he almost definitely doesn’t, because nobody builds long-term wealth through gambling).

*Christiano Ronaldo endorses Pokerstars. The unspoken assumption here being that Ronaldo himself frequently plays Poker, which, knowing him, is unlikely to be true*

Sports stars endorse gambling companies because they either 1. Don’t care that they’re encouraging their fans (often aged 18-25) to see gambling in a favorable light and potentially lead them towards a full-blown gambling addiction, or 2. They’re too stupid and ignorant to understand how the gambling industry actually works.

Sports betting advertising usually attempts to create a link between gambling and masculinity:

*The man in this advertisement presents a “tough” and “masculine” appearance and wears a suit. **Think**: Why have they chosen this particular image?*

Let’s think about it: does gambling on sports make you more masculine or manly? Will gambling on sports make you tougher? Stronger? More attractive? The answer is: No.

Young men will get the impression that gambling is a mature activity for fully-grown men, when in fact, gambling on sports (and expecting to earn serious money) is actually quite childish and naive.

Let’s ignore the image Floyd Mayweather for a second and focus on the yellow gambleaware.co.uk disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

According to British law, gambling advertising is required to have a gambleaware disclaimer at the bottom, reminding the audience about the dangers of gambling addiction.

But just look at how they’ve chosen to present this disclaimer to us. The word “FUN” is in giant, capital letters — even the disclaimer reminds us just how “fun” gambling is. And they’ve used a bright yellow colour, which generally signifies excitement and positivity. The disclaimer has been presented this way on purpose, not by accident.

HOW CASINOS AND SLOT MACHINES ARE DESIGNED

Las Vegas, Atlantic City, The Venetian Macao, casinos are everywhere and still growing in popularity.

When you walk into a casino, you might assume that the design of the layout and architecture is completely random. But in fact, a huge amount of thought has gone into every single aspect of the design.

Casinos are the perfect of example of how, in many ways, much of modern society is a “rat-maze” designed to get us to spend and consume as much as possible.

Make no mistake, the single goal of a casino is to take in as much money as possible; and the design of the casino is structured around this one purpose.

“The one thing you need to know about casino planning is that the whole point of a casino is to get people walking from the registration to the main body of the casino (…) We try to influence movement and the circulation pattern and therefore direct people’s experience.” – Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

There are no clocks to be found anywhere inside a casino, making it far easier to lose track of time and forget about the outside world. The layout of the casino is purposefully confusing and the exits are placed in counter-intuitive positions, causing people to get lost and inevitably spend more time in the casino — making them more likely to gamble more.

“The ideal scenario is one in which players do not analyze the various things they observe as they meander along the passageways, but instead just glance around without apparent purpose, hoping that something will trigger their emotional passion to gamble. The job of casino layout is to suspend walking patrons in a suggestible, effectively permeable state that renders them susceptible to environmental triggers, which are then supplied.” – Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

Casino designers have analysed the profile of a typical casino-goer and have figured out exactly what they want, down to the tiniest detail.

“While players prefer gambling in bustling casinos, they want to be isolated in their own private, intimate world from the surrounding hubbub that attracted them in the first place.” – Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

The music inside the casino too is chosen very specifically.

“Music that is too varied in these respects can disrupt gambling activity, for it “restores” your cognitive state to where you can make rational decisions (…) play something slow or mild in the middle of the day for one group of customers and then maybe build up the tempo throughout the day when there’s a high occupancy of customers” – Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

SLOT MACHINES

“No other machine was ever invented from which the profits derived were so fabulous on so small an investment, and with so little effort” Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

Slot machines take in between 65%-88% of a typical casino’s entire income. Slot machines have a far bigger house edge than blackjack, roulette or any of the more traditional games.

They’re also incredibly addictive. If you’ve ever seen somebody slumped over a slot machine, pressing the button over and over again, you were looking at someone with a severe gambling addiction. They use a variable ratio reward schedule which has been shown to be incredibly addictive.

Slot machines are also a completely solo venture. Those using them are isolated and alone, which makes addictive behaviour even more likely.

As they are indeed the most profitable area of the casino, the layout is built in a way that encourages customers to move towards them:

“Machines should not be hidden or camouflaged by attention grabbing décor, which should be eliminated to the greatest extent possible so as to allow the equipment to announce itself. “I don’t want anyone to come in and look at the ceiling— I don’t make any money on the ceiling. Instead of turning attention away from machines, every aspect of the environment should work to turn attention toward machines, and keep it focused there. From ceiling height to carpet pattern, lighting intensity to aisle width, acoustics to temperature regulation— all such elements, should be engineered to facilitate the interior state of the machine zone” – Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

When it comes to the slot machines themselves, every single aspect of them has been carefully designed to be as enticing and as addictive as possible.

“If the chase lights on the slot signs are running too fast, they make people nervous; if they run too slow, they put them to sleep. If the machine sound is too loud, it hurts the player’s ears; if it’s not loud enough, the energy level of the room suffers” – Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

They also pay great attention to the ergonomics of the slot machine: the height of your seat, making sure your eyesight is level with the machine etc. The most state-of-the-art slot machines have curved displays to ensure maximum comfort for the user.

“Why should we force players to lean in? It’s just not comfortable. We moved the players closer to the screen— just enough to keep their backs snug against the backs of their chairs (which was easy because our “no buttons” touchscreen doesn’t put a barrier between the player and the screen). Now, because they can’t slouch in their seats, they don’t get tired as easily.” – Addiction by design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

HOW GAMBLING ADDICTION RUINS LIVES

Gambling addiction is just as legitimate as a drug addiction. Instead of getting high off of an external chemical, you get high off the chemicals inside your own brain.

Gambling addiction is one of the more brutal addictions out there. They say that the worst thing that can happen when you start gambling is to get a big win. Many addict’s addictions began after they suddenly won £200 on a slot machine. From that moment on, they were hooked.

Gambling addicts often describe a “trance” that they enter when succumbing to their addiction. They feel like they’re in a dream-like state as they completely empty their bank accounts.

One of the biggest traps with gambling addiction is the so-called “double or nothing” strategy. Because after losing £1000, it’s still possible to win that money back if they just keep gambling. They double the bet, and then lose £2000. Panicking and wanting to get their £2000 back, then bet £4000. And the vicious cycle continues.

Gambling addiction is a special kind of hell. And those companies who make millions of dollars in profit from exploiting this addiction can certainly be described as evil. And gambling advertising that creates more addicts should certainly be banned.

There you have it. The secrets of the gambling industry revealed.

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