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How long is a piece of string? The answer to that depends on all sorts of context that the answerer to the question can\u2019t possibly have. The same is true when answering the question about whether social gambling is a good thing or a bad thing.<\/p>\n
The answer is nuanced, depending on countless different circumstances that we don\u2019t know about. In some instances, there is no question that it can be a good thing. Being with other people is usually a positive, to say nothing of the fact that someone else can call you out if your gambling is getting to be too much.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, spending time with others when placing bets can often lead to peer pressure to take part in gambling that you might not otherwise do. Being around a load of friends who are placing bets on the roulette, for example, might make you feel as though you should do the same thing even though you don\u2019t really know about roulette.<\/p>\n
You might tend to practice Basic Strategy when placing blackjack, but friends might encourage you to \u2018go with your gut\u2019 like they\u2019re doing, thereby increasing the House Edge. There is no one \u2018correct\u2019 answer to the question.<\/p>\n
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Before we discuss whether we think social gambling is a good thing or a bad thing, we should first establish what it is that we\u2019re talking about when we discuss \u2018social gambling\u2019. In essence, what we\u2019re talking about is when a group of people choose to take part in some form of gambling together.<\/p>\n
This might be that they have gone to a casino as a group and are tending to spend time at the same tables as each other. It could be that they have turned up at a racecourse or a dog track and are placing bets as a group, discussing what it is that they\u2019re betting on.<\/p>\n
For some, it might be a poker night organised at a friend\u2019s house or a journey to a bookmaker\u2019s shop on the way to a pub. Regardless of the \u2018what\u2019, it involves a group of people being in some sort of gambling establishment or placing bets with each other at the same time.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t anything more complex than that involved in the practice of \u2018social gambling\u2019, with the key thing being that you\u2019re doing it with a group of people that you know and are therefore likely to be more influenced over your actions than if you were with a complete group of strangers.<\/p>\n
They argue that buying chips at a casino in order to take part in gambling activities there is no different to paying for a ticket to see a play or buying concert tickets. You are, in essence, paying for your entertainment and there is nothing wrong with that in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n For a lot of people, heading to a casino, racetrack or bookmaker\u2019s holds no real consequence. They are able to turn up to such a venue and enjoy themselves, setting a limit on how much they\u2019re willing to gamble and calling it a day when that money is used up.<\/p>\n They are able to control how they act and can treat it no differently to if they had gone to a pub or some other social venue. By doing it with others, they get to enjoy the company of their friends and spend time having a laugh and a joke without the need to spend vast sums of money trying to beat the House.<\/p>\n Even those that have a problem with gambling can benefit from doing it in the presence of friends. That might sound silly, but friends are often the ones that call out your behaviour and put you in your place. It isn\u2019t out of the realms of the possible that some friends that you\u2019re out with point out to you that you\u2019re betting a lot of money and losing more than is healthy.<\/p>\n They might make you realise something that you haven\u2019t realised yourself, grabbing your attention and moving you into a position where you can get help with your behaviour, which wouldn\u2019t have happened if you\u2019d been gambling alone.<\/p>\n Imagine a scenario in which you don\u2019t tend to bet on anything in a casino other than blackjack because you have mastered Basic Strategy and you know that that reduces the House Edge. All of the friends that you\u2019ve gone to a casino with are playing roulette, however, and they encourage you to come over and place some bets on the roulette wheel with them.<\/p>\n Even though you don\u2019t know the game and are usually well-disciplined in your betting, you feel the peer pressure to take part in something else so you go with them. Soon, you\u2019ve lost all of your bankroll betting on the wrong things.<\/p>\n Now your friends have moved over to the blackjack table and you want to be able to bet with them. You get more money out of your bank account, placing bets on the blackjack table. Your friends, though, think you\u2019re being boring by following Basic Strategy and you feel pressured into betting \u2018on instinct\u2019, losing the money that you\u2019d just taken out of your bank account.<\/p>\n Neither of these examples are beyond the realms of the possible, yet we will often fall foul of not wanting to be left out of the \u2018group\u2019 and so we follow the examples of others. This is the sort of thing that can happen when we take part in social gambling, especially if we\u2019re trying to impress someone else. Only you will know whether you\u2019re strong enough in your personality to not engage in what others are up to, so only you will know whether social gambling is likely to be a force for good or not in your own personal circumstances. It will depend both on you and on the company that you keep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How long is a piece of string? The answer to that depends on all sorts of context that the answerer to the question can\u2019t possibly have. The same is true when answering the question about whether social gambling is a good thing or a bad thing. The answer is nuanced, depending on countless different circumstances…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":468,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newbettingsites.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2-friends-laptop-bigstock-vidistudio-300px.jpg\")
Writing in their paper, The Social Benefits of Gambling, Patrick Basham and John Luik argue that \u2018gambling is good for us<\/a>\u2019. It is, they say, a vital part of being a liberal society, to say nothing of the way in which will all benefit from the taxes raised<\/a> from gambling by the government.<\/p>\nWhy Some People Think It\u2019s Bad<\/h2>\n
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We are all different. That is a crucial part of being human and there are so many things that can alter the way we behave or how we approach something. What can be seen as a good thing for some can definitely result in being an adverse thing for others.<\/p>\n