this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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i will never understand why people would be dumb enough to play in online casinos, or any other form of digitalized gambling. this includes slots.
Nonono, you don’t understand, dude. See, there’s these hats, right? But sometimes, the hat has this super rare effect, see? And, if I spend $2.50 per crate key, I can sell that unusual hat for more than I spent on the key, making profit. OR — hear me out — or: I could spend the unusual i unbox on MORE crates and keys, and get more unusuals.
That’s not digital gambling, right? Right.
i know that this is talking about tf2, and yes this is gambling you have a problem
What about when there was that bug in 2019 that made it so you could only get unusuals?
I made hundreds that morning from selling all of my old crates. It was amazing.
Quick edit: oh dick, that was four years ago already?!
Hey, I sold all my hats for a Valve Index.
But I DID also have a shady key guy I paid through PayPal who gave me keys for 1.20USD, so I was very lucky.
I hate gambling, but I LOVED pixely hats. I’ve been to a casino only a few times in my life and it was almost always super boring. But the rush when there was a full server ceasefire so everyone could come stare at the firey hat I had just opened…
I understand why people do emotionally, but working in tech I just know there's no such thing as "online gambling". Even random number generators can't be 100% random. This takes that and adds on businesses that want to be profitable and minimal oversite.
I don't know how people can believe it's fair and not rigged. You're telling me out of all of those millions of lines of code, nothing in there skews a bit to the house to screw you over? Nah, they'll keep your money. Any wins you may have are because they let you have them.
It's all rigged, technically. If you go to a real life casino, slots are certified to pay out some percentage of plays. It's like, 8%.
If you play craps, roulette - the house always has the edge because there's more results favorable to them.
The only "casino" game where the house doesn't have an edge is poker because that's player against player. The house doesn't really have a stake in any outcome, they're just being paid to host the game.
In Poker, the Casino keeps a rake out of every pot.
Besides your examples there are only a handful of games where the player has so much as an even chance against the casino and even then it requires doing extra skill based efforts. One example is card counting in blackjack, using basic strategy you can lower the house edge to something like 1% or even a little lower depending on the rules of the table. Counting is the only way to push the edge in the players favor in blackjack. Even then, its taking what is around a 48% chance for favorable player outcomes and barely nudging it to a 50-51% chance for the player. Roulette has some of the best odds, something like a 7-8% chance to land on any one number and with hedge bets those odds go up without any input from either side but even then the house edge in that is still ludicrously high by comparison to blackjack, baccarat or poker.
Physical slots "feel" less likely to be rigged than digital slots but as another commenter said it depends on the jurisdiction one finds themselves in as to whether that is true or not. The state would like their cut too so most regulators want to keep the games fair as fair games draw players in. Rigged games eventually lose casinos business cause word spreads among the players. Overall digital slots just feel less trustworthy and most likely are less trustworthy.
There's also blackjack, but you have to start with a large sum, and count cards. Technically there's nothing wrong with that, but you'll get kicked out.
Edit: woops. Yeah the other guy already made my point.
No! Only we can rig games in our favor! Get out! -casinos
Why are you stalking me?
Oh agreed, it's just to me there isn't even the illusion of chance now. That "deck of cards" could have all the face cards "missing" out of it and no one would know. The slots could literally be programmed to pay out only if you seem like you're getting bored. it's just too easy
It depends on your definition of rigged. There are many "provably fair" online casinos where they use hashes and user generated seeds that influence the outcome such that it makes it 100% verifiably fair but you will still lose over time because the house edge. If you call the house edge "rigged" then offline gambling is equally rigged
Offline casinos can also make money on drinks/snacks/entrance fee/hotels rooms. Theoretically it would be possible to run an offline casinos with loosing odds. (They don't)
That's impossible for online casinos.
Offline casinos have a much higher margin (called house edge) than online casinos. This is because they need to pay rent, business rates, salaries, security, etc. Online casinos can survive on a skeleton crew with a cloud based turn key solution. Thus their house edge is usually lower. The lower the house edge is, the more players win. The more players win, the more players you have.
The casinos I've been to have had free drinks, snacks, and entry
I wouldn't call pseudorandomess(if that's what you're implying) as disqualifying something from being gambling - it only needs to be random enough with an even distribution.
If instead you're talking about odds being slightly in favor of the house then... that's literally no different than gambling irl either. At which point, I have to question what you even define as "gambling".
Online casinos are not rigged. But there's a lot of math behind them. And this math tells you exactly how much money the casino will make. There's literally no point rigging anything when you have a super stable source of income.
I well never understand why people would be dumb enough to play in ~~online~~ casinos, or any other form of ~~digitalized~~ gambling.
for fun? It's just gaming for money if you think about it.
No, it's not gaming, it's gambling. Gaming is if you get exactly what was promised for exactly what you payed. Gambling is if you maybe get what was promised while being disguised in gaming mechanics to be more appealing. And yes, loot boxes in games are gambling and should be banned.
OK... but it literally is 'games' that you play for money. The law governing gambling is referred to as Gaming Law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaming_law
All gambling games also meet the definition for 'games', which is likely why they also use that term.
Game: a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.
Some people enjoy the extra risk/reward added to games and can do it responsibly.
Go witchhunt all the gambling adverts to kids but let me play blackjack sometimes.
That's by design to make it sound like a good thing. The more accurate "gambling" has gotten deservedly negative connotations and the even more accurate "almost certainly being tricked into throwing your money away based on misleading information from predatory rich people" is a bit of a mouthful.
The Battle of The Bulge also met the definition for "exercise", doesn't mean people who sold it as a way to get fit wouldn't be fraudsters.
Sure! But that's not what casinos do, that's not how they get their money. They're inherently predatory and fraudulent. "The House Always Wins" because the "games" are rigged.
OK well you're clearly understanding me and choosing to faux miss the point anyway then.
yea same here lol
I can go out for a night with movies and dinner and spend $200. Or I can go to the casino, spend the same but with a chance I actually get some back
That’s some very expensive dinner…
Not really. Dinner including drinks for me and my wife will be $120 plus another $60 for movie and popcorn and that's low balling it
carefully walks into discussion
...crypto
runs out of the room
GET BACK HERE!!!
Not buying your bags!!
how is online gambling different than irl gambling?
Digital randomness vs physical randomness for one. Code can be subtly weighted easily in the direction and degree you want without regulation or oversight. Your roulette wheel’s loss of randomness is random itself and tampering is easy to see for regulators who absolutely exist and are inspecting. Even digital slot machines are heavily regulated. Your trust isn’t in the casino, it’s in the state it occurs in. And like yeah something fishy might be happening in a casino in your state. But nobody has stricter statisticians than the Nevada government. Their state’s economy relies on it.
Also physical gambling sells an experience outside the home in a specific atmosphere. Online gambling feels like the equivalent of getting a vodka faucet ran into your house next to the water. Sure you can indulge responsibly in that situation, but it’s not made for that purpose and it’s going to be much easier to find you’ve slipped into a serious addiction that’s harder to avoid.
This guy gets it. Thank you for articulating this point so well.
Fewer pants.
Another big thing is that in the US at least, recovering addicts can go to the casino and tell them to not take their money anymore. These safeguards aren't present in offshore online gambling sites.
Usually they promise you something like extra money on your first deposit, daily free spins, or something else to get you hooked.
A former coworker claimed to have a scheme on one casino to use those perks for guaranteed free money (of variable amounts per month), buuuut never told me much about it. Given that, it might even have been legit.
Haven't really tried it myself, I have ADHD so I'm afraid of addictive things. I already have alcohol, nicotine and caffeine in my life, I don't want to add gambling.
Good on ya for knowing yourself and avoiding that. Best of luck in dealing with your other addictions.