I haven't posted here yet, well, at least haven't posted a detailed story that accounts part of my gambling as I don't think I can describe it all here.
I'm 33 years old, married+2, and unfortunately I think I've been gambling since I was 15 or 16.
I mostly place bets on sports, sports betting, looking for an edge, but this "edge" is a myth, gambling is a myth, the only ones making money from it are the websites who take cut from each bet or their affiliates promoting their sites - the gamblers are in the bottom of the chain, but yet the addictive behavior is not something that is easy to overcome.
Long story, short, this week I even purchased a pick from a website, I know paying for picks is the WORST thing you can ever do to yourself ... the game on Sunday 5 days ago was OKC @ BOSTON in the NBA, the line was 226.5, I took the under, before the game started it was 228.5 - I was basing the bet on the fact it was the day of the Super Bowl, and all games ended early to allow time for people to watch the Super Bowl ... there were only 3 games in the NBA, 2 went under and this only one went with 250 points or something like that ... I put around $2,500 on this one, after losing $2,000 before then, approx.
I installed Gamblock on my laptop after this, in fact I did it whilst the game was still played as I saw no way the under is going to win ... Gamblock is a very powerful software but I could still access gambling in my phone and I'm very reluctant to install it in my phone, especially because it blocks too many links, even if the site has just gambling in the domain name - it automatically blocks it - I'm thinking of formatting my laptop because of it as I don't think these blocks will help me long term, not sure anyways .... let's keep on moving with the story.
So today is Friday in my time zone (Thursday evening in the US), I used my phone to check the NBA games being played tonight and noticed LA Lakers play @ Boston, when I checked the line like 16 hours before the game, just when the lines went out - the line was 221.5 - and then it went up and up and up and up - to 227.5 ... I told myself this is weird, why the oddsmakers raise the line by so much before the game even started, I was thinking about it throughout the day, wasn't sure if I should take an action or not ... but the more I thought about it the more I was so sure this will hit the under .. I told myself the Lakers don't score well like OKC and this is the same line I had on Sunday.
So I even paid $30 for a pick from someone who only had a pick for the total for this game, and unlike the pick on Sunday that was from someone who had 18-2 run in the NBA - this one was moderate, I preferred someone moderate, the pick was said to be coming "straight from the vegas oddsmakers" and this and that ... so I paid for it and then I saw .... yes, he is calling the under too... so I felt this sense of urgency - I have to make this bet, I just have to, I would get lots of my losses back!
And here comes the twist:
I was about to transfer $4,200 from the Business PayPal account to convert it to Bitcoin and then deposit this Bitcoin to this gambling website ... when I was about to make the transfer PayPal showed the fee for the transfer would be $84 (to send it as "Mass Payment" so the other recipient won't pay a fee).
Don't ask me why, I felt on that moment a STOP ... I told myself no, you know what, I won't make that transfer, I am not going to risk another $4,200 from my hard earned income.
So somehow I managed NOT to make that deposit - the "sad" or "happy" thing in this story? I had $70 left in my Bitcoin account, I told myself - well, this bet still gotta win so let's put $70 and that's it ... I told myself I would probably feel so sad for not taking that BIG action risking the whole $4k. A gambler's mind .... what can you say.
The game is happening now, I woke up around 3am in my time zone to watch the odds, I don't even watch the game itself, I just watch the odds in a popular betting site, I mean I watch the scores/odds with my phone, from time to time I go to other sites, like I don't follow up with every little second of the game ... long story short - I was kinda "sad" in the beginning, LAL and Boston barely scored at the beginning of the 1st quarter, the live line went to 219.5, twice with timeouts - I felt like "oh, you see, too bad you didn't risk the whole $4k on this one, this is going way under" (PS that's how the OKC-BOS game started too, with low scoring in the beginning).
Well, the last time I checked the odds was at half time, the live line was 234.5 - they scored much more, that's 7 points more than what I had bet on, and honestly I don't know how it will end - but I do somehow "appreciate" it - that you really cannot tell how these games will go by, and in some way in the 2nd quarter I actually wanted this $70 bet to lose or to be on the way there, I was rooting for them to score as I wanted to be proven, that no matter how I try to approach this - the randomness and the unpredictability of these events along with the bookies' "juice" - is simply not worth it - makes it a game of losers!
In fact, I calculated that if I would have to use Bitcoin and then convert it back to PayPal or cash or whatever - the odds I would get won't even be 1.96 - it would be 1.80 or so - because PayPal takes fees, Bitcoin exchanges take fees and what's not!!
The only thing that annoys me in all this is that Bitcoin made it possible to bet more easily - before Bitcoin I could have self-excluded myself from a site and that's it - I cannot place bets anymore, and it worked perfectly for me, it was truly a cure for me - this self exclusion.
But with Bitcoin you can bet anonymously, no one cares if you had 5-6 previous closed accounts or even if you used the same IP address, you can just deposit again and again ... the only "motivation" out of this is that to buy Bitcoin you have to pay fees - and those fees make the bookies' juice unattractive - so that's the only light at the end of the tunnel for me - because for me if the bet has no value then I have less motivation to place it - but you know what? NO BET HAS ANY VALUE when I come to think about it!!
The best value you can find is by not betting at all.
Thanks for reading and feel free to respond or share or express what you think.
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