What do you think about online gambling ( not poker )? Is it rigged? Do you play online?

Rigged? Well ... it's a long ways from transparent. No, I don't. We will have legalized online gaming soon -- the foundation is in place.

you said you are close with your kids. Was it hard to get them to understand the difference between advantage playing and outright gambling? If they said to you growing up they wanted to be a professional gambler when they grow up how would you/did you react to that.

If you had it all to do again would you chose the same lifestyle again or would you just play it safe and join the rat race.

How many times have you been broke? And have you ever hit rock bottom or have you have people loan you money to get back on your feet?

What has been your worst vice/ habbit during this time?

My oldest son and daughter understand what I do, the younger two really don't care -- but they will humor me in conversation. My oldest daughter is in love with games -- she has the bug, and is still learning where her limits are.

I wouldn't try to talk them out of it necessarily, but I would direct their attention to about a six foot section of my library -- and begin pointing out which volumes they need to read first.

Yes. I would just approach it with more structured objectives. Gambling can be just as much fun, even more fun, when you bank the game as it is when you play the game -- it's just that very few people have figured out how to make it so. Again, the dynamics of the quandary all fall under the rubric of trust.

One of my biggest misfortunes was never having a chance to meet Bill Harrah -- he died the year I moved to Tahoe. There's a great book titled "Every Light Was On" that everyone in this business should read. Harrah was one of the few people who understood what the business should be about.

Unless I had a lot of freedom and truly loved my work, that was not an option I ever seriously considered.

Three times in private life, outside of gaming, I've gone to negative net worth -- no liquid assets -- and no cash. It's not fun. Between those times, I've had three divorces -- which will hit your financial health pretty hard even when you "win". How I came back was by identifying an opportunity, writing a good business plan, and sharing the opportunity. In early 2000 I lost $14 million on paper, and was flat broke -- by 2001 I had made and invested $700k, which was all wiped out on 9/11. The second loss actually stung worse than the first. My "luck" has been a lot worse outside of gaming than it has been inside.

There were periods when I drank a lot more than I should have (see above), but I managed to avoid a lot of the other traps that ensnared a lot of people I worked with. One vice I had -- which most people wouldn't recognize as a vice -- I trusted people too easily. After my loss in 2000 I was working with a private investigator who specialized in financial fraud, and after my loss in 2001 -- I worked with him for a couple of years. That taught me a lot. It also cured me

When I answered your question earlier, I wrote "No, I don't." That was in response to "Do you play online?" not "Is it rigged?"

I understood , also which books about gambling lifestyle/strategy do you reccomend reading?

21 - It depends what level you're at. I still like Revere's book for foundation, but Stanford Wong's work is definitive for strategy (IMHO). The rest of the game you can learn on the job if you're connected to a good network of players. Griffin added a lot, as did Grosjean.

Poker - I like Sklansky's books. They're fairly vague, as they need to be -- only experience can fill in the details. Reading blogs will reveal how a lot of people both under-analyze and over-analyze the game, depending on what tools they have to work with. I think books on sociology, psychology, and narrative economics are extremely valuable. I really like the work of Malcolm Gladwell, Nassim Taleb, and most Austrian economists as a framework for understanding behavior. But I'm strange -- and that may not be good advice for everybody.

Sports - Read everything you can on probability, statistics, and computer modeling. Here again, economics provides a framework for an approach to decision making.

Never been in this sub forum but great read and keep it up!

What game do you play when you want to relax, gamble, or just have fun with friends drinking that may be -Ev? What strategy would you use while playing it?

GOLD!

Thanks for a great Well!

If I'm playing a -EV game in a club for fun and relaxation, the strategy is to minimize cost while maximizing entertainment value and survival time. Those are generally really, really bad games -- like roulette, horse racing, and keno. When the stakes are low enough, or the game slow enough -- it's inexpensive entertainment.

With friends and family I play cribbage. Everyone in the family plays cribbage -- the kids all learned to play before they were in school -- and most friends who don't play soon learn.

My pleasure.

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Do you have some sort of strategy for roulette? Or some lucky numbers?