What is your attitude to gambling?
It's a strange question to ask perhaps, but the answer to this is one that you should ponder about for a while, because hidden within your attitude to gambling is the key to enjoying playing online casino games, sports betting and other wagering games without a problem, or the risk of developing an unhealthy relationship with online betting and gambling.
Of course, it's easy to answer this question with a one line, somewhat pithy answer, such as "good" or "positive", but that doesn't tell you anything. To investigate your attitudes to gambling further, you need to consider a few other questions.
1. How often do you gamble?
Many people who start to develop issues with gambling will drastically under-estimate the amount of time that they spend gambling. Even if they are aware of how much they gamble accurately, they may tell others that they gamble considerably less than they do for fear of worrying them, or revealing the extent of how much they gamble.
If this is you, then alarm bells should already be ringing and you should be seeking some help to get this under control.
Fortunately for the vast majority of gamblers, they fully understand when they gamble and why. They will gamble infrequently as there is no compulsion to do so. They may enjoy a couple of hours in the online casino to unwind on a Friday night, or enjoy a sports bet on the weekend.
Having a good grasp of how often you gamble and being able to control that, is a good sign you are developing a healthy attitude towards gambling.
2. How much do you spend?
In answering this question, what matters is not the precise amount you spend (as everybody's circumstances are different. A multi-millionaire spending $1,000 at a casino in a month is one thing, but an unemployed person with a family to feed doing the same, is entirely another) but rather what proportion of your income either weekly or monthly, you are spending.
The issue here is control and how you can control what you spend on gambling. If you spend only disposable income and can easily stop gambling at any point, perhaps going a few weeks without playing if cash is tight, or is needed for other things (such as birthdays and Christmas) then this is a positive attitude.
You clearly understand that gambling is just a frivolity and that when your cash is needed for other items, you need to adjust what you can spend on your hobby accordingly.
The negative side of this is when you find that you are gambling with more than just your disposable income, or that if you need to use your disposable income for something else, you need to find another source of income to fund your gambling. Be that in the forms of loans, credit cards or even using money earmarked for important payments (household bills, rent etc).
Obviously, if this sounds like you then you have a very unhealthy attitude to gambling and it is one that is seriously impacting your life and has the potential to be hugely destructive. Again, you need to seek help to stop doing this before it is too late.
As we have said before, it isn't the amount you spend , but what proportion of the cash you have available for life that matters. If you have $200 free at the end of each month to spend on your online casino gaming, then that's fine. The problem is when you don't have $200 free, but continue to spend that feeding your gaming habit that it becomes a real issue.
3. How do you react to winning and losing?
One of the key elements of nurturing a healthy attitude towards gambling is having the right attitude towards winning and losing.
The vast majority of casino games, especially slots, are entirely games of chance. There is little a player can do strategically in many games to alter the outcome.
Therefore, the healthy attitude to have here is that if you are going to spend X amount playing a slot, then that is the money you are going to spend on your choice of enjoyment. View it in the same way as you would spending money on a night out. You don't expect to go to town with friends, enjoy a night out, a few drinks, something to eat and come back with more money than you went out with!
If you can accept that the casino has the edge and that you are likely to lose, but you enjoy the experience of playing, then that is the perfect attitude to have towards casino gaming. That isn't being defeatist, simply a realist and accepting the situation as it is.
If you lose, then you lose. You were expecting to as the odds were against you but you still enjoyed yourself and there's is always next time. If you win, then that's a bonus and means that you have had a very good night.
However, if the flip side is true and that you expect to win when playing casinos games, or feel that you 'must' win in order to enjoy the experience, then you are taking your first steps down the wrong path.
Casino games are all designed so that the casino will eventually win. Play for long enough and you'll always likely end up out of pocket. That's just how casino games work and they have to for casinos to operate at a profit.
If when you lose, you have to keep playing until you win, that is a warning sign that you are developing the wrong attitude to gambling. If you win and simply view any winnings as the chance to gamble more in any given session, then that is another warning sign.
If you gamble and don't feel any excitement or gain entertainment from the process, but rather feel a need to win, or a necessity to gamble, then again this is a warning sign. Gambling should be fun and should not be taken too seriously.
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