[HN Gopher] Don't bet on the joys of pokies (2011)
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Don't bet on the joys of pokies (2011)
Author : furtively
Score : 86 points
Date : 2024-04-19 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grogsgamut.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (grogsgamut.blogspot.com)
| mock-possum wrote:
| "Pokies" appears to be Australian slang for 'video poker
| machines'
| Pannoniae wrote:
| small addition: not just for video poker, it's slang for any
| slot machine.
| kyteland wrote:
| pokies = slot machines
|
| cardies = video poker
| kristofferR wrote:
| Yeah, I was sorely disappointed, that's not what I associate
| with pokies at all.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| yeah I somehow read that as pocky and was confused for a bit.
| arduanika wrote:
| Agreed that wouldn't make any sense. You can always bet on
| the joy of pocky!
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| And then all this talk about "NSW"
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Yeah, not nearly as titillating as it seemed.
| klyrs wrote:
| My dad spent a few years in the pokey, I experienced relief
| on learning this australiaism.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| One armed bandits.
| jddj wrote:
| Some real australiana here.
|
| To paint the picture for those who aren't familiar, the industry
| is enormous and, in NSW in particular, extremely powerful.
|
| For a while (still? Not sure) in Brisbane, for example, you
| couldn't enter a bar after 1:30am unless it was a casino.
|
| In NSW the sports clubs, of which there is one in every midsized
| town, have busses which circulate the retirement communities and
| bring the elderly to the poker machines for the day then drop
| them home again, broke. The busiest day is pension day.
|
| Most small pubs have a larger and busier poker machine area than
| bar/beer garden area. Large "sports clubs" dedicate entire
| floors.
|
| Australians lose the most money per capita to gambling by a
| significant margin.[1]
|
| [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/552821/gambling-
| losses-p...
| jimkoen wrote:
| I'm not even Australian, but thanks to friendlygeordies, even I
| know gambling in AUS is a cartel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WDK5PByQgM
| onychomys wrote:
| I'm not even Australian, but thanks to Wake In Fright, even I
| know gambling in AUS is something guaranteed to strip you of
| your civility and turn you into an outback maniac:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mh7qZq0f_w
| satori99 wrote:
| NSW is home to the largest number of gambling machines anywhere
| outside of Nevada.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_Australia#New_Sout...
| richardw wrote:
| Recent immigrant to Australia here. Love the place, but the
| power of the gambling industry is alarming. Very interesting
| episode on the link with sports, and increasing earnings:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/audio/2023/may/10...
| bitwize wrote:
| Poster I saw on a men's restroom wall in a restaurant in
| Brisbane:
|
| Fly 1: Bet you I can run up this wall faster than you.
|
| Fly 2: Bet you you cant.
|
| They say Australians will bet on two flies running up a wall.
| If you have a gambling problem, call this number yada yada
| yada.
|
| Other poster from the same restaurant:
|
| Win a trip for two to Las Vegas.
| moomin wrote:
| Not Australian, married to an Aussie. I think pokies are an
| obscenity. And they're everywhere, they invade as many areas of
| life as they can.
| VelesDude wrote:
| Yep, until folks see it they cannot understand the scale of
| these things.
|
| It isn't just Crown in Melbourne, which for most folks is more
| like the traditional Vegas casino. All my local RSL's/Pubs are
| all about 50% pokie machines.
|
| And yep, that complimentary bus is not there to bring the old
| folks in for a pot and parma.
|
| Funnily enough, while it isn't the most pervasive, in New
| Zealand is where I have seen folks that are betting the
| highest. The wave of depression that hits you when see a lot of
| people all down on their luck betting $10 a spin every few
| seconds is just wild! I mean, yeah the Christchurch winter is
| bad but not that bad!
| beckthompson wrote:
| Man this article is sad. Being addicted to gambling really does
| suck the life out you.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| I've played enough poker (and similar games) on computer
| (against bots, no real money) to know that 1) I am quite bad at
| assessing the expected value of my moves; 2) I am quite...
| what's the English word for someone who gets way too excited
| from the thrill of gambling and forgoes the caution?
| "Hasardeux" is French for it, but I don't think "hazardous" has
| that sense in English? Anyhow, I do know quite well that were I
| to gamble with real money, I'd very soon go broke and it's not
| a difficult observation to make, even for someone as bad at
| self-reflection as myself. So, I don't gamble.
|
| And yet apparently there is something about gambling with real-
| life consequences that is very attractive to oh so many people
| who (again, apparently) can not replicate the similar
| experience in a less life-ruining way, so they return to gamble
| again and again?
| lostlogin wrote:
| > what's the English word for someone who gets way too
| excited from the thrill of gambling and forgoes the caution?
| "Hasardeux" is French for it
|
| Is this 'a gambler'? Addict, risk taker or similar?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "with reckless abandon" might be an equivalent phrase, e.g.
| "he played poker with reckless abandon".
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I am quite... what's the English word for someone who gets
| way too excited from the thrill of gambling and forgoes the
| caution? "Hasardeux" is French for it, but I don't think
| "hazardous" has that sense in English?
|
| Does the word have to denote (literally mean) that the person
| is _emotionally excited_ and engaged at the same time? If so,
| then perhaps "a daredevil", "hotheaded", "impetuous",
| "impulsive" or "rash".
|
| There are a lot of close words like "reckless" or
| "irresponsible" which are _often_ used when the person is
| excited, but technically they don 't require it. Someone can
| be quite reckless while also half-asleep doing something they
| don't personally care about.
| mateo411 wrote:
| > I am quite... what's the English word for someone who gets
| way too excited from the thrill of gambling and forgoes the
| caution?
|
| I think degen is the common term that used here. It's short
| for degenerate.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I think degen is the common term that used here.
|
| Sir, I think you mixed up your HN account with 4Chan...
| _dain_ wrote:
| "degenerate fuckin gambler" is a common term predating
| 4chan
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/degenerate#Adjective
|
| _> (of a gambler) Addictive or compulsive. _
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| I guess you're getting downvoted because people think you
| mean HN by "here", but you meant amongst gamblers. And
| you're right, it is the most apt term gp was looking for.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| I definitely was not. "Courageous", "adventurous", "risk-
| taking", "reckless", "impudent", "bold", "daring", but
| with something that would mean "...almost and even to a
| fault or own peril", but _without_ an inherent negative
| moral connotation is what I was looking for.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| It doesn't have an inherent negative moral connotation
| when used amongst gamblers. It's been reclaimed, so to
| speak. But I suppose we're not amongst gamblers here, so,
| fair enough.
| saghm wrote:
| > what's the English word for someone who gets way too
| excited from the thrill of gambling and forgoes the caution?
| "Hasardeux" is French for it, but I don't think "hazardous"
| has that sense in English?
|
| The best I can come up with is "adrenaline junky", but that
| isn't specific to gambling; I feel like people use that to
| refer to people who like base jumping or something.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Well, since we're all _already_ in pedantic grammarian
| territory: That would be "junkie", since it is a noun
| identifying an addicted person.
|
| In contrast, "junky" is an adjective to describe a
| generally bad state or quality. "Junky adrenaline" is
| probably medical waste.
|
| Ex: "It's not safe to travel in a junky car driven by a
| junkie. Worse still to sail on a junkie's junky junk."
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Poker players would label you as being strategically too
| "aggressive", but that doesn't necessarily have anything to
| do with emotion, it's just what they would call the way you
| play.
| csa wrote:
| There are several terms of art in poker that describe various
| versions of this:
|
| action player -- This is fairly neutral, and describes what I
| think you mean. Someone who likes to gamble. Sometimes these
| players are really bad, sometimes they are only sort of bad.
| These players make bank when playing against weak players who
| overfold and aren't willing to gamble.
|
| VIP -- This is a polite way to say "donator". Many/most
| action players are VIPs. Their attitude is that they can
| gamble in the pits or gamble at the poker table, and often
| times the poker table presents less bad (or even good) odds
| when compared to the house.
|
| LAGtard -- LAG is short for "loose aggressive". LAG can be a
| very profitable style, especially when deep stacked. That
| said, LAGtards tend to play the style badly.
|
| spewy -- describes someone who puts a lot of chips into the
| pot, often times in questionable spots. Noun form is
| "spewtard".
| ryandrake wrote:
| As a non-addicted, casual gambler (I recreationally play 1-2 no
| limit poker at casinos once in a blue moon), I'd hate to see
| casinos simply disappear, but yea they tend to be kind of sad
| places full of the people who can least afford to lose the
| money in their pocket. Don't know what the solution is. If you
| outlaw it, you're getting rid of a benign source of casual fun
| for folks like me who can keep it under control, and are not
| really addressing the underlying addiction of the victims--
| they'll just move on to underground casinos and/or more extreme
| gambling.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Society pays a pretty high price for that casual fun for
| people like you.
|
| Maybe go see a movie instead.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Vice has a cost. Anti-vice has a cost. There is no such
| thing as a free lunch and you're going to pay the piper
| somewhere. While I'm not a gambler myself, the "Just don't
| do $vice$" moral argument just never works on it's own.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Unfortunately, there's not a livable version of society
| where we "ban" gambling. Doing so just pushes it
| underground, and therefore inevitably into the hands of
| some kind of organized crime. I imagine the best compromise
| would be to create a state monopoly and make it easily (but
| not universally) available, while also trying to push some
| social stigma against it. Unfortunately for harmful vices
| like this, the anglosphere (and I assume a lot of other
| places) tends to oscillate between prohibition and hands-
| off marketism.
|
| We are seeing similar with sports betting and marijuana in
| the US. Less than ten years ago, these were major crimes
| basically everywhere. Now, in large swaths of the country,
| you can't drive a mile without seeing a billboard for one
| or the other. Making them illegal again is not the answer,
| but we don't seem to have a standard way of shading things
| like this in any meaningful way.
|
| (By the way, I'm not against people smoking a little weed
| or betting on football, but plenty of people do get
| momentum with both and it can have harmful effects for
| them. I believe the industries pushing both behaviors are
| in large part profiting off this small group of heavy
| "users". )
| mynameishere wrote:
| _just pushes it underground_
|
| Why is this an argument? So push it underground. As a
| rule, old folks aren't going to take their pensions to
| Fast Freddy's strip club backroom poker nights. People
| think that because a law doesn't work 100 percent, it
| shouldn't exist.
| ryandrake wrote:
| What do you think gambling-addicted "old folks" who live
| in areas where gambling is illegal do today? They either
| hop a short flight to a place where it is legal OR head
| to Fast Freddy's. People absolutely do participate in
| illegal gambling when legal gambling is off the table,
| whether they are elderly or not.
| Retric wrote:
| Some is very different than every.
|
| Banning subsidized travel to casino's alone would go
| quite far. Similarly banning slot machines from having
| sound, flashing lights, animations etc would reduce
| though obviously not eliminate the draw.
| gregw134 wrote:
| I found a local poker club, fortunately. $40 buy in
| tournament, no rebuys, every week, with the same 30 or so
| people that show up. Way more fun than playing at the casino
| with sad addicts and sad poker pros grinding $40k annual
| salaries.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, I mean I do this too, including hosting my own home
| games. Our local club even hires dealers to help keep the
| games moving.
|
| My fear is that there's no great way to outlaw predatory
| casinos that pick the pockets of the poor, that still
| allows responsible home games and private clubs. A lot of
| US states try/tried various ways, with rules about who can
| take a rake and so on, but it's difficult to make them
| ironclad and casinos are highly motivated to find loopholes
| and operate a millimeter from the edge of the law. And if
| you get too strict, suddenly you've criminalized grandma's
| $0.25 bingo game with the ladies.
| tudorw wrote:
| I don't recall the name of the paper, surprising to me, it was
| fairly detailed on how the 'satisfaction' gamblers experienced
| was from the familiar losses, not the occasional wins, viewed in
| that light it's even more tragic.
| tennis_80 wrote:
| I started my career working on gambling apps, and it's one of my
| red lines now when looking for work.
|
| It's an evil industry - full of dark patterns. I remember
| implementing a "cancel withdrawal" feature where essentially: the
| casino could deposit money in a customers bank account in a day
| when they request it. They instead choose to hold it in a pending
| state for a week, and allow them to cancel the withdrawal at any
| point in that week to immediately play with. Presumably so it
| didn't feel as real as money leaving the gamblers bank account.
| eterm wrote:
| The major UK sites have recently done a similarly dark move by
| adjusting their definition of "Depost Limit".
|
| Used to be if you set, e.g. a PS50/month deposit limit, then
| you couldn't deposit more than PS50 a month.
|
| They recently changed it to be a net limit, so if you withdrawl
| PS500 after a win, you can now deposit PS550.
|
| While it can be argued that it still acts as a guardrail for
| maximum losses, it absolutely encourages problem gamblers to
| deposit more.
| jon_adler wrote:
| Sad to discover that the (reasonable) reforms were quickly
| scuppered.
|
| https://theconversation.com/pokies-reforms-explained-how-goo...
| Solvency wrote:
| what is it with Australians and having the cheesiest names for
| everything? pokies. electricians are sparkies. bikkie. spewie.
| budgie. brekky.
|
| it's like a bunch of babytalk only it's said by literally
| everyone.
| smaudet wrote:
| I posit that its due to hardship - not to suggest all
| Australians are super hard off, but it is certainly true that
| acronyms/shortened words are more common in rural (think high
| intensity physical labor) or speed-sensitive contexts (think
| Wall Street, engineering jargon in a engineering context, such
| as software, or SMS text-messaging).
|
| Given their origins as a prison labor camp, coupled with a
| legitimately difficult environment (hot, arid, isolated by
| thousands of miles of ocean, fairly wild/aggressive wildlife
| such as crocodiles, snakes, kangaroos), their propensity to
| shortened, almost mono or duo-syllabic words makes plenty of
| sense in that context.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| And _finally_ I 've seen the (variation of the) argument
| usually applied to the Russians, about their slavish nature
| ("During the Stalin's reign, half of the country was in jail
| and the other half was the jailers" etc.) leading to the
| impossibility for them to form a civilized and liberal
| society, which is usually retorted with an example of the
| Australians... being applied to the Australians itself.
|
| No, one doesn't need to be of good breed to be freely able to
| speak multisyllabic words.
| smaudet wrote:
| > No, one doesn't need to be of good breed to be freely
| able to speak multisyllabic words.
|
| Eh? Not what I'm saying at all. Breed has nothing to do
| with it... circumstance has much more to do with word
| shortenings... not sure what I got downvoted for...
| settsu wrote:
| Maybe an equallly interesting question to ask yourself is why
| you associated those with "babytalk".
| Solvency wrote:
| "hey bubby, lets washy your widdle wubby tubby! want a
| snacky?? wanna take doggy for a walky??"
|
| are you seriously asking this question? have you never been
| around babies before?
| settsu wrote:
| You assume I haven't been around babies because I asked why
| you attributed an entire country's slang to baby-talk?
| Fascinating.
|
| Guess intellectual curiosity isn't everyone's forte. That's
| fine.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _it 's like a bunch of babytalk only it's said by
| literally everyone._
|
| They must be doing it intentionally to infuriate you (the
| only cocky in Oz with sufficient snags for the barbie).
| brainwad wrote:
| Because it's fun to have diminutive version of many words. And
| because it differentiates us from boorish Americans - or as
| they are also known in Oz, seppos.
| bitwize wrote:
| I once saw a sign in Australia warning about crossing train
| tracks. In the land of the free, the sign would have all the
| coziness of a Secret Service agent: KEEP
| OFF TRAIN TRACKS - $100 FINE PER VIOLATION
|
| But this was Australia. So it actually read something like
| this: "Cross tracks safely and only at the provided walkways.
| Or cop a $100 fine. Don't say we didn't warn you, mate!"
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| For comparison, the standard text in Great Britain is
| exactly as follows: Warning Do not
| trespass on the Railway Penalty PS1000
| brainwad wrote:
| The actual signs in Sydney look like
| Danger Don't cross the tracks - use the
| bridge. Fines up to $5,500 apply.
|
| (https://railgallery.wongm.com/cache/sydney-
| suburban/F121_540...)
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| That's arguably a lot better than the British ones:
|
| - They give an safe, alternative action, which might not
| be obvious to some people.
|
| - They state the authority by which the fine is issued
| (too small to read fully from the photograph, but
| something like "...Regulation 2003"). Interestingly, a
| historical railway sign preserved at Beamish has the name
| of the officer by whose authority the fine would have
| been issued at that time[1].
|
| - The fine is given as 'up to' the maximum. As I
| understand it, the British fine is only PS1000 if it can
| be proved that the violation was made wilfully, and non-
| wilful trespassing is usually (perhaps always?) only
| subject to a fine if done subsequent to having received a
| warning.
|
| [1]: https://www.deviantart.com/rlkitterman/art/NER-
| Public-Warnin...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Surely it's to differentiate you from the English. We may not
| be a commonwealth, but surely our origin in common with
| Australia grants us that much?
| brainwad wrote:
| The English/British and their media are not as jarringly
| foreign as Americans, because Australian culture and
| language diverged from English culture much later than
| American did.
|
| There's also 5x fewer of them, so they are less of a threat
| to our minority culture than Americans are - Americans
| don't realise just how dominant American English is in the
| Anglosphere and how hard it is to resist.
| robocat wrote:
| > seppos
|
| seppo is short for septic, which is short for septic tank,
| which rhymes with yank, and yank is a word used for any
| American. And although yank comes from yankee, we mostly
| don't discriminate between north and south so it is a general
| term.
|
| Like all words in Aussie only context can make it insulting -
| it can just as easily be used in a friendly way. Apparently
| the word seppo is not used much, maybe mostly by older
| Ockers. I'm summarising a long discussion on the word and
| usage that goes into more detail:
| https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-australians-
| call-a...
|
| > what is it with Australians and having the cheesiest names
| for everything
|
| It is just language diverging memetically. A small part of it
| is signalling you are _not_ a stuck up snob.
|
| The wannabe hoity-toity "I'm better than you"-types try and
| change their accent and word usage to match some "educated"
| upperclassish snobby accent and then they speak down to
| others and try to correct their English. Some of the snobby
| accent is memetic - due to hanging around a particular social
| group.
|
| The accusation of baby-talk and cheesy comes across as
| aggressively stuck-up to me.
|
| I'm from New Zealand and it is fun to see some snobby bitch
| get drunk and then hear her accent shift to some bogan
| accent([?]hick drawl) from their childhood. I've seen the
| same thing with some suits in a bimmer in a wealthy suburb
| change their whole demeanour to rural farmer-types given
| circumstances. In New Zealand farmers are often wealthy and
| their kids often get expensive private education and move
| into professional jobs.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Australian slang represents something important about
| Australian values - mateship, the Anzac spirit, a fair go.
| Aussies don't talk like poms, because they aren't like poms.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ...or other English speakers.
| VelesDude wrote:
| Spoken like a real Gronk! Nah, your cool.
|
| I suspect it is just something we picked up from our British
| heritage, the whole slang thing.
|
| Apple and Pairs, Up the Stairs - all that.
|
| I do find it funny when some folks have been here for a few
| years and they have picked up all the slang. Someone I used to
| know had been here for 10 years but still had a very thick
| Italian accent. It was always a joy when he would bust out a
| sentence like "I took the mars bar up the Tulla but it was
| right chockers. All I wanted for a Chook!". Translated, "I took
| the car up the freeway but there was a traffic jam. I wanted a
| hot chicken."
| ozzydave wrote:
| Blow up the pokies
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