The Unfathomable Allure Of Online Gambling. [Dave at Garfield Ridge]

Friend of Ace, me, and dogs everywhere See-Dubya has been posting over at Patterico's for some time now.

His latest post attempts to understand why anyone in their right mind would gamble online.

Now, I never gamble, unless I order out. I love Las Vegas, and Atlantic City ("Where New York goes to smoke") has its Springsteen-lyric charms, but my appreciation for both locales runs more into the realm of people watching than the opportunity to let it ride. If I play at all, it's just to keep myself mildly entertained until I can scout the clubs or hit a restaurant.

If I earned a cool million a year, I might reconsider my timidity, but geez, there are plenty of things in life more worthy of spending money on, like call girls, Johnnie Walker Blue, and .50 caliber sniper rifles. I'll stick to watching ten straight hours of the World Series of Poker and my scratchy VHS copy of Rounders, thank you very much.

Perhaps this all makes my opinion concerning online gambling unworthy of consideration. After all, I've never tried it, but that's because I subscribe to the same reasons not to that See-Dubya lists.

-- I give my credit card number to someone I don't know, and I probably can't sue.
-- I have no way of independently verifying the accuracy of the games I play, nor any way to complain.
-- There is no people-watching online, dammit.

Besides, if I'm going to spend all that time online, I'll just surf for porn, thank you. And I can find everything I want for free (with the exception of those, ahhh, "specialty" films involving. . . well, we won't get into that now, will we?).

So, anyone out there play online, or know someone who does? Care to explain the appeal, if the answer is not "addiction is a terrible illness"?

posted by Ace at 06:45 PM

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