Gambling and Its Phenomenon

What is gambling, in general? It is to speculate on an uncertain event, involving the placing at risk of money or other possessions in the hope of achieving more money or better possessions.

Even to choose not to marry is to gamble that this will prove to be the better course. One gambles when buying shares or a motorcar. When making a car journey, or crossing the road, one stakes one's life or health on one's roadsense or agility.

Insurance companies rarely go bankrupt, because of the skill of their accuracies. In other gambles skill and judgment are irrelevant: these gambles might be called pure or true gambles.

Betting on the toss of a coin is a true gambler. An amusing example of this form of gambling occurred in the film The Sheep Has Five Legs, when Fernandel and his shipmates bet on which of two cubes of sugar a fly would first alight upon.

The fly's wanderings included a tour of a semi-clad young woman, instructed not to move. Incidentally, as crooks have devised ways to doctor sugar cubes, this gamble is not always as pure as it seems.

The ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt and Rome had gambling equipment: dice, in the form of astragals or sheep-bones, counters and gaming boards or tables existed hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

But why do lots of people gamble though? The Russian novelist Dostoevsky was a confirmed gambler; he wrote his novels under the pressure of mounting bills, and his gambling served to increase the pressure.

Through the narrator of The Gambler, his partly biographical novel, Dostoevsky describes an initial depression at the sordidness of the casino, the oppressiveness of the crowd within, and the seriousness with which the gamblers concentrate on the spin of the wheel and the fate of their stakes.

Forced into gambling by the need to make some money, he at first succeeds and describes the irrational feeling of power which winning induces.

Later he encounters a losing run but nevertheless discovers a sense of infallibility, a certainty that he cannot continue to lose indefinitely.

He bets recklessly and loses his entire capital. Dostoevsky then describes the overwhelming excitement provoked by the stupid loss of a large sum. It is perhaps this reaction which distinguishes the pathological gambler: the winning or losing becomes subordinate to the thrill of gambling.

Gambling is taken to mean the betting of money on events involving chance, or both chance and skills. However, it may not be a human need in the class of food, shelter or sex, but its practice is remarkably universal, and it is found in all societies and at all levels.