• stoy@lemmy.zip
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    22 hours ago

    I will forever be thankful for a cruise I went on when I was in my teens.

    There were unrestricted gambling slot machines, I had 20SEK, I started gambling at one machine, and won! I tripled my money, so I had 60SEK.

    Instead of being sensible and buying snacks, I gambled more later, and lost it all.

    It was not a large amount of money, but it still stings, and have put me off of gambling ever since.

    It was probably the best return I have ever gotten from any money.

    • GenosseFlosse@feddit.org
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      15 hours ago

      I once got 20x the payout from a slot machine in a pub when I was in my teens. Thought i would never be this lucky again, withdraw the winnings and spend it all by buying a Gameboy game. Never spend any money on gambling again in my life.

    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
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      13 hours ago

      This is also my gambling story! I also lost money to those slots on a ship as a teenager. Although it was a ferry to England, not a cruise. But I haven’t gambled since.

    • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
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      22 hours ago

      Alex Trebek said that gambling had no appeal for him.

      If he won $100.00 it didn’t make any difference in his life, and if he lost $100.00 he felt like an idiot.

    • greenskye@lemmy.zip
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      19 hours ago

      Brother took me to a casino for my 21st birthday. I did a bit of research, so I only took in $40 and left my atm card at home.

      I wanted to play the cool looking slot machines. Brother convinced me that roulette was going to be way more fun. It was a busy night, so it took almost an hour to get a spot at the table. And the minimum bet was $10. Roughly 3 min after finally getting to bet, I’d lost all $40, having not won a single time (even my bets on the colors failed).

      It was so utterly disappointing, especially when the next person in our party got to the table and managed to keep their bets going for over an hour and left with a few hundred extra $ that night. Most of the night was me just standing around bored out of my mind.

      I’m very thankful for that early experience. Later experiences were better, but also far more tempting. I attribute my ability to resist the temptation largely to how shitty that first night was.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      17 hours ago

      What put me off from gambling at an early age was trying to get a porygon in the original Pokemon Red Version.

      Also, I played a lot of casino minigames in the Mario64 DS remake. I did alright at some but it definitely taught me that you can never truly predict the outcomes, so don’t bet with anything you don’t mind losing.

      As an adult though, I literally never felt the desire to actually gamble with real money. That sounds idiotic.

    • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      I don’t gamble often but when I do I treat it as an entertainment expense. I can budget $60 to going to a casino or for buying tickets to something. When the $60 is gone I am done.

      It’s all about $/hr of entertainment value.

      That said I haven’t really been gambling for 20 years.

    • confusedwiseman@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      My trick is to try to separate “winnings” from the amount planned for gambling. I look at it as how much to spend for time of entertainment. The idea would be to try to only lose the original 20SEK you started with and try to move the over 40SEK into the other pants pocket.

      It’s not always easy, and it’s harder with the stupid electronic cards that I’m sure track your profitability.