I have to admit that it took a very long time before I realized that those seemingly entertaining casino sorties that we have had in the past years almost made me among the stupidest people in the world.
It took me a lot of time to finally realize that casinos are simply mass financial slaughterhouses designed to make fools out of people and to take away their hard-earned money by utilizing all schemes – devious or not – possible.
In these days and ages of social media, some people even take their foolishness to new heights by posting their casino addictions primarily via “vlogs” (video blogs) on YouTube, Vimeo, and other websites. Most of these poor, misguided souls get their highs from playing the slots machines and by the number of visitors or ‘hits’ on their vlogs — and they think they are popular when their vlogs get viral.
Casino owners and operators are simply laughing: these gambling addicts provide free advertising for the casinos, and vlogs promote gambling to a much wider audience. This is just another foolish denial of the gambling addict and a means to legitimize one’s vice.
It’s only a matter of time before casinos get all they have. The others who claimed fun, food, strategy, discipline, and additional self-deceptions have been sucked in, chewed up, and spat out.
In addition to their massive mailing & advertising campaigns, casinos employ people called “VIP Hosts” to cater to gamblers with lots of money to lose. These scumbags will seemingly give big-time gamblers attention and care while milking away all their money.
The whole premise of a host is to extract as much money from players as possible. Casinos award hosts bonuses based on how much the gambler loses. This is pure and simple evil.
Entertaining or not, there is always a sinister feeling that I get each time I enter a casino – – or any gambling establishment. Entering one, you get sucked into a place that distorts your concept of time and money.
Time and money: that’s what the casinos take away from ordinary folks out to have a good time or hard-core gamblers.
More than money, it’s that valuable time you lose for the rest of your lives while you’re inside casinos that make you much more foolish than you think otherwise. The time I wasted is no different than what a prisoner loses while locked up in jail.
All for what? Wasting countless hours staring and pressing that ‘BET’ button in slot machines (yes, casinos try their best to make them more animated via more giant screens and louder speakers) simply to watch a virtual reel spin on a colored screen?
These man-made contraptions have what the casino industry euphemistically termed a ‘random number generator.’
The truth is these machines are designed and programmed to bring guaranteed financial ruin to any casino habitué who had that fantastical notion that they can make these gambling establishments their ATMs.
The key word is here is: “programmed”. So, how can you beat a machine – in the long run – that was designed and made to pay out lower than the amount of money you put in?
Now that I have just mentioned ATMs, some casinos offer “NO ATM FEES” inside their places. Mind you, this is not a service to help people out but just another one of their many devious schemes to facilitate the transfer of people’s hard-earned savings and checking accounts to the casinos’ already-fat accounts.
Watching the green baize while your bankroll dissipates because of the huge casino advantage is no fun.
And all along, their second-hand-smoke-smelling employees quietly (or, sometimes, brazenly) celebrate that they had legitimately defrauded people of their nest eggs yet expect tips from those they had just robbed.
It’s OK to lose your time and money for a worthwhile cause but lose both inside a casino? Casinos provide all the tools to make a person stupid. Just think about it.
There are better and much more exciting things to do in one’s lifetime than spending the bulk of your time inside a casino.
It took me a lot of time before I finally realized that I was punishing rather than entertaining myself when I went to a casino.
Casinos also fool you about the “real-world” concept of money. You give them real money, but they give chips or a piece of paper in return. These simple diversions are mere ploys that make it easier for them to take all your real money.
Casinos also fool you by giving the illusion that whatever you lose, you can have it all back with a single ‘lucky break’ — a break that will never come.
How can a good thing come out of a place borne out of a devious scheme?
For people who still have difficulties seeing through the lies and deceptions of casinos, it’s just a matter of admitting you have an addiction. And the realization that casinos do their best to get you deeper into that addiction.
No matter how hard casinos try to trick people -through their massive advertising campaign- into believing that their places are just fun, you can have a good time. This may be okay if you possess that super willpower (in reality, this feat is almost impossible as we’re all just human) and simply go to a casino to eat, drink and be merry and not have anything to do with their slot machines and table games…then go straight home.
But that’s the initial bait casinos have laid out for people on their path to financial ruin. While inside a casino, the lure of these money-draining slot machines and the hard sell of their dealers to play those table games whose odds of winning are stacked heavily against players are simply too hard to resist.
Some may have wised up and gotten scared after realizing they were in a life-stealing vortex. Others simply fell into the same trap and lost all their money. But, newbie gamblers with fresh faces filled with excitement, hope, and gambling naïveté fill the spaces left by those fun-seekers who have deceived themselves at the hands of the super-slick gaming establishment.
So, why fall into these traps laid out by casinos when you can have a better time with your family and friends in honest-to-goodness places that serve better food and entertainment?
Casinos, therefore, are just a trap borne out of a devious scheme — for your financial ruin and for you to become a prisoner by way of the precious time you lose when you’re inside one.
Most people will recognize their lack of power to solve specific problems if they are honest. When it comes to gambling, I had noted – including myself – that many problem gamblers could abstain for long stretches but were caught off guard and, under the right set of circumstances, started gambling without thought of the consequences.
Through willpower alone, the defenses they relied upon gave way before some trivial reason for placing a bet. Willpower and self-knowledge will not help in those mental blank spots, but adherence to spiritual principles solves our problems.
I believe that to believe in a power greater than ourselves and to acknowledge that gambling is evil are necessary for one to sustain a desire to refrain from gambling.
So, don’t let casinos make a fool out of you. Avoid them by all means, at all costs, and recognize them as places of evil.
Remember when you see that big “CASINO” sign, whenever and wherever you are: You will lose your CAsh and visit a SInister place… so, just say NO.
You’re not a fool, are you?