You can gamble legally pretty much anywhere in the U.S. The most common type of gambling is in state lotteries, which I believe all but seven states have. These have proven so successful at generating revenue that they now come in hundreds of variations and there are even multi-state versions.
Lotteries are a variation of a type of street hustler's game simply called "the numbers" or "playing the numbers." You pay for a chance to pick a series of numbers. The bookie generates a set of random numbers via a drawing of some sort. If you correctly pick the numbers (or some subset of them) you win. The odds against you doing so are huge, but so is the payoff. In casinos, the variation on this game is called Keno.
The thing is, despite its wide-spread legality, it is the most pernicious sort of gambling imaginable. There is zero strategy or thought involved in picking numbers. The risk is small (just a single dollar). The potential return is big. But it also has the highest negative expectation of just about any wager. Tempting as it is, on average it's about the worst sort of bet you can make.
Lawmakers and various species of moralists righteously decry gambling in principal and wring their hands in fits of condescension over they harm it does to the vulnerable poor, then they go off and sanction the form of it that is most seductive to low-income types and turns the biggest profit for the state. Of course, they usually claim all the money goes into schools, so it's okay because it's for the children.
And no matter how you play the lottery, and no matter what strategy you use at the craps table, you will lose over time. You may be way up and you may be way down, but play often enough and you will be in the red.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is sports gambling, where that is not the case. Unlike lotteries, or even casino table games (which are now acceptably moral for some states and most Native Americans), you are not mathematically at a disadvantage. If you can outsmart the crowd and if you see something that others don't see, there is no a priori reason you cannot come out ahead consistently. Other than poker, I know of no other common form of gambling where this is true (unless you count day trading in the stock market).
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
• This explains Tinkerbell's hostility.
• This doesn't explain why I haven't received the editor's cut of the profit yet.
2 - david mazzotta
I thought I gave it to Tinkerbell to send. Yeah, I distinctly remember it now, because it was the day she bought that blow torch and a copy of Gray's Anatomy.
I'm sure it will arrive any day now.
3 - Tinkerbell, aka The Tiny Warrior
OH! That's what the money was for? Hey Sussman, you just send along your address and you'll be sure to get it.
Re: hostility. I beg to differ, unless, of course, you tick me off.
XOXO! TTFN!
4 - The Theory
"If you happen to run across one of the Bengals at the bar, buy him one for the road on me."
Run run like hell since he's just as likely to stick a shiv in your side.
5 - david mazzotta
What a friggin' ending to Dal/Sea!!! Absolutely unreal!
Seahawks fans can officially consider themselves even for the bad officiating in the last Super Bowl.
If they didn't have a cake schedule in a cake division and what turned out to be the worlds most fortunate safety and a freak fumbled snap by Romo they would be nowhere. You guys are square now.
Oh and good call by me on the high scoring Indy/KC game, eh?
6 - Temple Stark
Good point Dave. Forgot about the SuperBowl refs. I've got a post written and waiting for publish on the game.
7 - RJ Elliott
I wonder if Romo's great-great-great-great-great grandmother is cursing herself now, for going out in them fields, with a mind full of lust... :-/
8 - Matthew T. Sussman
They must have conceived on an oil slick.