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Is it ego that makes us want to gamble? (Long reflection piece inside.)
is it ultimately our egos that drive us to gamble? do we essentially want.. no, do we NEED to prove to ourselves that we are “smart” about sports and their outcomes? and if so, why?
maybe the picture i'm about to paint isn't the case for all sports bettors, but my primary assumption has always been that the vast majority of sports bettors grew up as huge sports fans as kids. and what i mean by sports fans is primarily watching sports on TV or in-person at games, but not necessarily participating in them ourselves in an organized fashion through our schools’ teams, local leagues, that sort of thing.
and to go one step further, i've also assumed that many of these kids (i.e. us/today’s sports bettors) actually used sports as an escape when we were young. maybe there were any variety of problems at home/school/socially where sports became our main outlet. maybe many of us were naturally quiet, introverted, socially awkward, late bloomers. whatever the case was, sports became our refuge.
at some point, as time went on and we continued investing more and more of our time into following sports, we were introduced to the concept of the point spread on games. for most of us, especially the older folks here, that introduction was likely made by our local newspaper’s sports section where lines were always posted. and while we had noticed these lines in the paper for a long time, it wasn’t until one day those lines suddenly meant more to us.
so at some point we all started sports betting due to a variety of reasons and influences in our lives. for me, it started early in high school where a close friend of mine (and likewise huge sports fan) had access to parlay cards. he would get the parlay cards from an asian kid who we referred to as “Lou Kang”. Lou Kang was a few years older than us and his family owned a local laundromat where his dad was in the parlay card and booking business as a side hustle. (talk about a cliché story about one’s introduction to sports betting, but yes it’s true). anyway, one day my friend told me about these cards and before i knew it, he was providing me parlay cards to fill out each week during football season.
anyway, i’m sure everyone here has their own “fun” story about their introduction to sports betting as well. but let’s fast forward… so we somehow got into sports betting and it immediately had a huge impact on our daily lives. always checking lines, constantly calling score phones, calling recorded messages for free picks, trying to cap games with friends, the whole nine. betting on the games basically became our way of “enhancing” the viewing experience we had long been infatuated with. and if we had already been spending most of our free time watching and tracking games, then surely betting on them should be easy, right? i mean, who knew more about sports, the teams, and all the players than US who were constantly watching them?
so years and years go by, then decades, and we’re still sports betting into our old ages. (granted, not everyone here is “old” but work with me here). we’ve all had lots of huge wins but far more huge losses. many of us have even experienced serious periods of financial ruin because of it. and for ALMOST ALL of us, in the bigger picture of life, betting has not only sucked most of our free time away, but the world around us has passed us by in the meantime. it seems like every "normal" (non-sports betting) person we've known over time has advanced further in their lives than us. endless missed social engagements, isolation from family, you name it, gambling has ruined our lives in countless ways. of course, there are successful sports bettors who’ve lived very active, fulfilling, and balanced lives.. but for all intent and purposes here, let’s focus on the vast majority of “us” who fit this far more common narrative.
so why do we still do this? does it ultimately trace all the way back into our childhoods when we first became obsessed about sports? do we view all this time we’ve spent on it as, in essence, one of our greatest “life’s works”? and can we simply not accept that this “life’s work” has been a destructive failure?... so we continue to march on with the sole purpose of trying to FINALLY be “right”?... that only an IDIOT would fail at something they've dedicated the better part of their life to?... how could our egos possibly handle such a concession?
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Originally Posted by Orbison
lakerboy gave grease lightnin 1 SBR Point(s) for this post.