Casino Gambling in College

It’s everywhere or at least close to everywhere.  There are certainly ads everywhere for it.  It’s fun.  There are lots of things to do at the casinos and hotels. 

But the main business of casinos is to get your money away from you.  They don’t produce anything you can eat or that can provide shelter.  I suppose they claim to be providing “entertainment” just as many sports or show business venues do.  While these other entertainment choices can cost a lot, you don’t have to keep paying while it’s going on. You know the whole price when you buy a ticket.

It’s is important to realize that it is impossible to win in a casino.  Even those who run them say that.  There are a few short term winners but they inevitably give the money back by continuing to play.  You don’t have to quit while you are ahead.  You have to quit when you run out of money.  Of course as an accountant, I can see this as an especially bad deal.  Giving money away where the only benefit is the thrill of giving your money away isn’t appealing.

If casino gambling (I include various gambling machines that might be other places too) involved definable set of skills or methods, if it could be trained, then respectable universities would offer degrees in it.  If winning at gambling could be taught, who better to learn than intelligent young college students. 

If this were anyway legitimate, with your new casino gambling degree, you should be able to get a business loan to stake you and you are off to making a living.  But that isn’t what happens.  If this were possible, people would win so much from casinos that the casinos wouldn’t be viable.  If the odds approached being even, that would probably be the case.  If even a high level of skill in playing games was the necessary tool, enough people would turn their hand to gambling that the casinos would collapse. 

But none of this happens.  What happens is that millions of people enter casinos every year and most, necessarily, leave with less than they started with.  The saddest cases are those who are under some illusion that they can win.  It is hard to believe that casinos get away with this.  In fact, hardly anybody criticizes it.  I’m sort of libertarian leaning politically so I’m not saying it should be outlawed. I’m saying we shouldn’t do it because it’s not only expensive, it’s dumb.  Or at least wait until it becomes legitimate enough to be a college major.