What's the story with lads in the bookies?

Drinking And gambling are both fun. Iv dome the same thing but only a few times a year when the big horse races are on.

At that level, like drugs, it's an addiction.

Before the smoking ban came in they had this perma-smoke haze inside them.

Like most addictions - it is of course hard to understand from the outside. Which is not helped by the fact that when people get deep into an addiction, they are in a head space different from the head space you and I might be using to understand them. The rules of judgement and logic you and I bring to bear are damaged or absent or suppressed in them.

The addiction also itself likely exploits quite a few individual aspects of the human psyche.

One buzz phrase that is a good example is "The Sunk Cost Fallacy" which is that humans have a tendency to invest good money in something if they have already done so in the past. Throwing good money after bad as the old term goes.

But like other addictions, it also exploits the dopamine cycle. Bringing a stronger and stronger emotional and dopamine high when wins actually occur.

Another example is the human tendency to be convinced there is a pattern where none exists. Often compounded by human "confirmation bias". A similar example I know of is a guy playing an online computer game called "Entropia" which is essentially a gambling based Second Life World. There is an attribute called "Perception" which increases over time. Probably Randomly. But this guy was convinced it goes up when you are near a big score.

Watching him play was a revelation. It would go up 10 times over time and on the 10th time he would get a big score. And he would whoop "See I told you! Perception!". His mind literally filtered out the 9 times his theory did not hold and took the 10th one as proof he was right.

Things like Horse racing can be similar. You can become convinced you have a "key" or "system" that guarantees winning. And your mind will literally convince you you are right even if using your system gets you one good hit in 100.

Could be. There is a tendency to look at addictions as the problem. Sometimes they are of course.

But they are all too often a symptom of some other problem. Which is one of the reasons they are so hard to abstain from.

Abstaining from the object of addiction without addressing or even discovering the underlying causes (if any) falls somewhere between highly difficult and impossible for most people.

For every 1 person hanging around a betting shop now, there's probably 1000 online wasting their money.

The profits all the gambling companies made prove this.

This is probably the major addiction in society right now. There's only one winner in all this

It's not just the bookies though. Online is a massive thing. I've see guys gamble on football matches in Azerbaijan, how many corners,how many player changes etc. The list is endless of the ridiculous things they can get you to bet on.

Bookies used to be an old man's spot my grandad was a regular with 20p each way on a horse but it kept him out of nannys way while she was in the supermarket. He used to complain about the blokes sitting there for hours, you are one as well I always slagged him. Ah love but I'm I'm my 70's not my 20's

What's silent about it?

Gabbling advertising permeates every part of society - tv and radio

Online tv streaming adverts

Online forums and website advertising

Billboards and buses

Sports events

I'm saying the damage is relatively silent.

Do you disagree with something I've said?

No conversation about gambling is complete without mentioning the lotto.

A tax on the working class.

They are also in the top 5 of ad spend in the country.

Complete mugs game. My mother once said at least with the drink you can only drink until you fall down.

I used to go to a lot of the UCD debates they'd have in the evenings. One such debate was around gambling. It was well debated and there was good back and forth. Your man Paddy Power was there, leading the pro gambling side. When it was being wrapped up after about an hour. The chair asked "OK, OK we'll leave it at that does anyone have any final questions for our panel?".

After all the debate someone at the back stood up and dropped a bomb. "I have one final question for Paddy. Why are all bookies the most grim, desolate, depressing, god forsaken places in the world?". He nearly fell from his chair.

Yeah I only watched that on YB a few weeks ago. It was probably a sign of the colossal class divide in Britain but it was hilarious just how surprised the bloke for PP was. It was like he was dropped into another planet.

It is well worth a watch.

I heard a radio ad a while ago along the lines of:
Pick your favourite team, or player, or league…. If you can't decide, use our "bet builder" to put a bet together for you!

So basically if you don't know what to bet on, but are so addicted you just need that hit, our algorithm will make up a bet for you (that you will definitely not win btw)

I thought that was the saddest thing I heard in a long time.