The Rise and Fall of the Online Gambler
If you’re here, that means you love online gambling at least as much as I do. There’s no two opinions about it within our not-too-small community – online gambling rocks! Going out to a physical casino can be very fun when you’ve got a nice company to come with you and a few hundred bucks you’d be perfectly willing and able to spend on gambling, but if those conditions aren’t met then you’ve got a bit of a problem. Going to the casino by yourself, without a good amount of cash, sucks. It feels like an incomplete experience, like you’re missing something that you were intended to have. That’s why online gambling is so great – you can have only a tenner in your credit card and, say, fifteen minutes of spare time after the kids are off to bed, and you can still have a very complete experience playing slots, bingo or placing bets on your favorite sports.
But online gambling can be a double edged sword. On one hand, there’s plenty of accounts of people who made it big by playing online casino. Just a few days ago, a woman from Scotland managed to win £2.5 million by playing an online slot. Just like the example above, the woman, who is a teacher and a single mom, was bored on Valentine’s Day and decided to play an online slot. This would’ve never happened if online gambling wasn’t a big thing. You can’t exactly just go to the nearest casino on Valentine’s day, abandoning a seven-year-old child alone so you can play slots, that kind of thing simply doesn’t happen, or if it does, the authorities should definitely be involved. And yet thanks to online casino this ordinary woman managed to become a millionaire. This isn’t even the only case, or, hell, not even the only case this year – last month, a man won the £2.2 million progressive jackpot for an online slot, breaking records and taking names.
The number of people who made it big (I’m not talking millions, just thousands) from online slots is gigantic. The online slot industry is one worth billions of dollars, so it’s really amazing to think that it’s capable of giving out so much money and still remain highly profitable. But that’s because not everybody wins. A few days ago, the news that the creator of NYPD Blue – an immensely popular police procedural which ran for 12 seasons – was facing bankruptcy after spending his fortune of 100 million dollars on gambling, including sports betting and online casino. David Milch had to sell off his mansions and estates and move in to live on a $40-per-week budget in order to curb his horrible gambling addiction. The very same institution which had changed the lives of so many people by making them millionaires brought an actual millionaire, and a very creative person, to ruin.
I suppose that the message I was trying to narrate with this article is that one shouldn’t be swayed by the messages of positivity overflowing the web. Online gambling is great as long as it’s done in moderation. Try to be more like the Scottish mom and less like David Milch. Striving for the jackpot is great, but if you feel like you’re way in over your head and may be headed towards an addiction, don’t forget to seek help while you still can.