I just got back from Las Vegas this weekend, and boy did I have a blast. It would have been a lot better if I didn't have to study for my Securities Analysis mid-term scheduled for the very next Monday night. Regardless, the place is amazing. There is so much money everywhere you look, Las Vegas is truly a desert oasis of entertainment.
A couple of my friends did extremely well on the video roulette game in the Bellagio, so much so in fact that I thought I had an excellent strategy for mimicking their success. But let me tell you, the streets of Vegas are littered with the broken dreams of failed get rich quick schemes. I reasoned that if I could bear the risk of losing long enough, I would be rewarded with excess returns. It was my first experience with being pushed out of my risk tolerance comfort zone, and it made me feel, well, icky. Betrayed. Unlucky. Not my fault. At one point a ridiculous concept flashed in my head that blamed the casino for my losses, but I quickly came to my senses. Mind you, it wasn't like that commercial where I was having to explain to my fiance that $3000 was like a drop in the bucket in Vegas, but I was sore nonetheless.
But then I wondered, could the casino have actually saved me from getting carried away with my gambling? Could the machines and dealers actually sense when gamblers were getting carried away, and like bartenders, cut them off? According to this article, "The effects of gambling addiction," approximately 5 billion dollars a year is lost on gambling addiction. This makes me wonder if entertainment industry moguls and/or government representatives may start insisting that "something be done" about our nation's gambling addiction problem.
In the movie "Ocean's Thirteen," casino security systems are portrayed as being able to detect players who are cheating by their emotions or lack thereof. Perhaps their style of playing is unnatural, or perhaps they wager systematically against the odds. If these are actual functioning systems, couldn't they also be used for recognizing patterns of gambling addicts? Oh I see. If you prevent someone from cheating, the casino makes money. But if you prevent someone from losing their shirts, the casino loses money. Funny how so little has been done so far against gambling addiction...we'll take an order of corporate social responsibility over here...
A couple of my friends did extremely well on the video roulette game in the Bellagio, so much so in fact that I thought I had an excellent strategy for mimicking their success. But let me tell you, the streets of Vegas are littered with the broken dreams of failed get rich quick schemes. I reasoned that if I could bear the risk of losing long enough, I would be rewarded with excess returns. It was my first experience with being pushed out of my risk tolerance comfort zone, and it made me feel, well, icky. Betrayed. Unlucky. Not my fault. At one point a ridiculous concept flashed in my head that blamed the casino for my losses, but I quickly came to my senses. Mind you, it wasn't like that commercial where I was having to explain to my fiance that $3000 was like a drop in the bucket in Vegas, but I was sore nonetheless.
But then I wondered, could the casino have actually saved me from getting carried away with my gambling? Could the machines and dealers actually sense when gamblers were getting carried away, and like bartenders, cut them off? According to this article, "The effects of gambling addiction," approximately 5 billion dollars a year is lost on gambling addiction. This makes me wonder if entertainment industry moguls and/or government representatives may start insisting that "something be done" about our nation's gambling addiction problem.
In the movie "Ocean's Thirteen," casino security systems are portrayed as being able to detect players who are cheating by their emotions or lack thereof. Perhaps their style of playing is unnatural, or perhaps they wager systematically against the odds. If these are actual functioning systems, couldn't they also be used for recognizing patterns of gambling addicts? Oh I see. If you prevent someone from cheating, the casino makes money. But if you prevent someone from losing their shirts, the casino loses money. Funny how so little has been done so far against gambling addiction...we'll take an order of corporate social responsibility over here...
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