Article by Cameron Spink

Sport does strange things to men. The World Cup has only been on for a fortnight but all of a sudden one of my friends decided he’d put some money on one of the games. The Brazil v Korea DPR game to be exact. And the amount he put on Brazil to win: $800. It took sixty-eight minutes of stressing but finally Brazil were on the board and my friend won the bet. He made $80 off the bet.

This is how most gambling addictions start, with a win. Perhaps were an amateur gambler to lose it would dissuade them from continuing. Anyway, my friend placed another bet on a “sure thing”. And he won $120. So he continued and placed $300 on Germany to beat Serbia. It made sense didn’t it? Germany had beaten Australia 4-0, Serbia had only managed to draw with Ghana. The thing about soccer is it is a very volatile sport. With such low scores all it takes is one incident to change a match. The incident in this game was the German’s losing their key striker to a red card. In AFL if you lose a player for the match you’ll cope and do more interchange rotations. In soccer losing a player makes a win very unlikely.

So Germany lost to Serbia 0-1. And my friend was down $300. This is a key reason not to gamble, because “the house always wins”. In whatever capacity you are gambling in, the gambling agency always ends up on top. You can win two or three bets in a row but all it takes is the one “sure thing” to lose and all the smaller bets that you’ve won are overshadowed and cancelled out.

My friend’s next decision affected his future as a gambling addict. He made the correct decision and licked his financial wounds. However, this is not always the case. Upon a loss many gamblers place another bet to try and win back what they have lost. Winning is not what drags you into a gambling addiction. It is just the carrot that is placed in front of your nose. Losing is the real trap that drags you down to a place where you must continue gambling to pay off your losses.

Today in the Courier-Mail it was revealed that “Australian gamblers lost an average of $1500 last year”. This is staggering and shows what you’re up against when you gamble. It’s not just the odds in front of you on the screen, it is also the statistics that play against you and tell you that you have to be an infinitely better gambler than the average gambler to actually leave in the positive. The problem is most gamblers don’t think they fall into the “average” category when they probably do.

It is tempting to put some money on “sure things”. But “sure things” don’t exist. If they existed there would be no betting occurring. And the more money you put on “sure things” the more likely that they will lose. The favourites don’t win every time. All it takes is one loss and all that money that you’ve made is nullified. Don’t be deceived, the house always wins.