There is a slogan by a major beer manufacturer that says, “Know when to say when”. A slogan by one state’s Council on Problem Gaming says, “Winners know when to quit.”
The attitude expressed by the two slogans is virtually identical — that is, to drink and gamble responsibly. And there is no doubt that problem drinking and problem gambling are both serious problems today and anything that can be done to reduce these problems is a good thing.
Drinking and gambling, however are not the same. I believe using the same slogan for both activities is very misleading. I am not claiming any great expertise into problem drinking or problem gambling, and I certainly do not have any cures to offer, but I do have some thoughts on the matter.
In drinking, how much a person’s body responds to 3 glasses of beer, for example, is fairly consistent from episode to episode. It changes over the course of time, of course, but very gradually. However much 3 beers impaired your performance at anything a month ago is a very good predictor of how much 3 beers will impair your performance today.
In gambling, however, it is different — at least in video poker. For a quarter player, sometimes investing an extra $20 will lead to a $1,000 royal flush, although usually it won’t. A month ago, the extra $20 might have paid off very handsomely — or very poorly. That is a lousy predictor of what is going to happen today.
With alcohol, every drink makes you a little more intoxicated. It is never the case with alcohol that taking one more drink will all of a sudden make you cold sober. But with gambling, this can and does happen. This makes the “knowing when to quit” decision more difficult in gambling than it is in drinking. Balancing this somewhat is that each drink impairs ones ability to intelligently evaluate that decision — whether it is easier or not.
In gambling, you have the phenomenon called “steaming”. This is behavior where somebody gets behind and then bets bigger and bigger in the hopes of a miraculous recovery. Sometimes their ship comes in. Usually they end up drowning. For people who steam, it is impossible to go home a small loser. They either win something or lose a whole lot.
The fact of the matter is that I rarely know precisely when to quit gambling — and I definitely can be called a “winner” at gambling, however you define it. Sometimes, of course, it is obvious to me — such as double points ending at midnight or I need to play 3,000 points a day to get into a lucrative drawing and the only game to play is at a slight disadvantage. To me, either of these situations makes quitting time very obvious. These situations, however, amount to a small percentage of when I play.
So in general, when do I quit? Take a for instance. I play enough at one casino to keep the mailers coming. I don’t know how much play that takes. Maybe it takes six hours of play. Maybe it takes two hours. Maybe it depends on whether I win or lose. I just don’t know for sure and the casino isn’t talking.
So what to do? I play for a few hours, and sooner or later I’ll quit. Sometimes it is because I have an appointment to go to. Sometimes I get too tired to concentrate. But often there is no particular reason. Sometimes I’ll say something to myself like, “I have $600 in credits now. When it either gets down to $400 or up to $1,000, I’ll leave.” I suspect everybody makes these self-promises similar to that.
But when the $400 or $1,000 figure arrives, usually I quit playing but sometimes I don’t. MAKING a self-promise is one thing. KEEPING such a self-promise is another. I suspect that breaking such a self-promise is considered to be a sign of addiction. When combined with other things, that might well be an indicator of addiction, but I am confident that I am not a problem gambler even though I sometimes break such a self-promise. Sometimes when I go below the $400 in this example, I hit something big and go right back up again. And sometimes it ends up at zero.
I am not a person who gambles until they run out of money — although there are many people like that. If you ALWAYS play until you run out of money, then you cannot be a winner. Part of being a winner must be that you take money home with you relatively frequently. Because the losing sessions come to all of us, and you need some serious winning periodically to offset those sessions.
In one context, however, I do frequently gamble until I run out of money. Often I leave when the credits are at zero. I may well have quite a bit of money in my pocket, but the fact that the machine is out of credits is a common ending point for me. So in one context I am “out of money,” and in another context I am not. For this very reason, many people break a hundred dollar bill into twenties and play them one at a time. This gives them several “chances to stop”.
Ticket-in ticket-out machines make this less of a factor. It is much easier to stop on these machines than it was when coins were used. On the machines that spill out coins, if you are playing quarters and you have $100 in credits on a machine, cashing out involves 400 coins. Four hundred quarters can be relatively heavy, dirty, and often the machine will run out of coins during the process. But when the machine spits out tickets on demand, these problems disappear. It takes no more effort to cash a ticket for $720 than it does for $20 — but with coins this is simply not the case. So playing on coinless machines makes stopping when you have credits easier.
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