Gambling. Board of the Week - in latest email

[Deleted User]

I was very surprised to see this in the latest email about the site. Gambling as a 'board of the week'.

For a MoneySAVING site I'm surprised people are being pointed in the direction of gambling at all.

Even if people are simply taking advantage of an initial free amount to try their luck with - this merely wets the appetite and encourages them back for more. Less discliplined people, and those already in debt, may be tempted to continue gambling in the hope of solving their problems.

Online gambling is now a rising cause of debt.

It is not enough to simply say 'don't get sucked in'.

Pointing people there in the first place risks them being sucked in, whether they intend to be or not.

MSE_Martin

Hi Deleted_User. We've had this discussion previously and it is one of the reasons i dont put individual gambling loopholes in the tip anymore.

However the point is these are loopholes just like any other.

Telling people how to play a nectar card to get £30 of free cash could lead people who dont read into debt

Telling people how to get £50 free cash from risk free gambling intro offers could lead people into gambling

Telling people how to get tesco loophole points could lead people into overeating and obesity

Yet what you have to do is simply put it in context. I don't encourage gambling I do believe risk free loophole grabbing is legitimate. yes there's a risk of people gambling because of this, but the huge exposure to gambling through adverts is probably more likely. There is always a balance to be had between paternality and protection and i believe that's been correctly drawn

Martin

[Deleted User]

Thanks for your reply Martin.

You cannot compare tesco loophole points and possible obesity because of them. There's a good chance a few Tesco loophole points will not make people obese even if they do spend them on food. Tesco loophole points are unlikely to lead to a dangerous addiction either.

What do you suppose happens after the free introductory offer for the gambling expires? These companies continue to bombard people with offers and invitations to sign up. People who have never previously bothered to gamble find themselves suddenly having offers thrown at them with the subliminal message that 'the big win' can change their lives/sort their debts etc... - and rather like credit cards and loan companies, anyone 'vulnerable' to this sort of bmbardment may simply take them up on these 'offers'.

I have worked with people who have become gambling addicts, and they have always become addicts from the most innocuous of introductions to it, whether that be a works outing at Christmas to a casino, or online offers for poker. I have seen the damage it does to whole familes, and not just the 'addict' - who unlike an alcoholic, can hide and deny the addiction with far more stealth.

I know that many people will take these offers for what they are - a free chance to spend someone elses money and maybe win something whilst at it.

But unfortunately there are those who will take it down a very destructive road.

MSE_Martin

Deleted_User - I do understand your point, but i believe balance is important and i try and strike it where i feel it fits

martin

debtbuster2K5

I would just like to add, that I have used some of the tips on the gambling board and have found them to be very useful.(And profitable)

I think that it is down to personal choice and how disciplined you can be.

If you are able to exploit the system for personal gain and are strong willed enough to not be sucked into gambling, then go for it.

If not, avoid it and try a different form of moneysaving

Regards

DB

Tim_L

I'm going to have to defend the gambling board very strongly (being the mini-mod of it).

If you can forget the very deep seated prejudices against gambling and actually read and understand the posts on the board, particularly "easy free money through matched betting", and donglemouses diary, you will see how ANYONE can make between £500 and £1000 risk free in 2-3 months.

There is no essential difference between applying the techniques listed on the board to obtain cash from a mixture of Quidco (or Rpoints) and reputable UK companies such as Betfair and Totesport than there is in stoozing, or taking a referral bonus for a bank account. You're doing transactions with perfectly reliable companies, and the only risk is that you make a mistake - identical to stoozing. You are not breaking terms and conditions, and if anything it's slightly less risky than (for example) using other peoples' online voucher codes to buy stuff at a discount.

This is most resolutely not gambling. It is using simple maths to cash out large amounts of bonus money from bookmakers. In fact there are similar techniques that are if anything more lucrative (Casino bagging, i.e. using Casino bonuses to skew odds in the player's favour) but which require some degree of risk; these are specifically banned from discussion on the board.

It is by quite some distance the most profitable thing I have learned on this site. It beats stoozing by some distance, certainly. I have made over £500 a month (tax free) consistently for well over two years, but I have to say that I do it very intensively, am inclined to try less well established bookmakers and also quite large bonus offers requiring a lot of capital. This has more than paid my mortgage. I will tell you what happens after the intro offers run out when this actually happens: in over two years this has yet to be an issue.

The only thing I find surprising is that people who don't like gambling (and therefore might be expected to be resistant to the lure of vice) don't confront their prejudices and give this a go. Try the Corals offer via Quidco, matched at Betfair, and follow up with the Corals 'CHIPS' offer also listed on the board, and you will be on for about a £40 profit in two days with virtually no effort at all.

Incidentally, once you are over the problem with the concept of gambling there are some useful side effects, not least that you can start to consider financial spreadbetting as an alternative to ISA investments or day trading in shares: both of these activities are gambling even if the financial services industry have persuaded people they are not. You can simulate the behaviour of a tracker ISA very easily with a rolling spreadbet, the proceeds are tax free, and you can also earn savings rate interest on your capital since you only need to fund the marginal losses. There are some complications, and this is not a technique for the beginner, but it's a very interesting avenue.

ag359

I fully agree with Martin and Tim_L. I am actually quite irritated that I just posted what I thought was a helpful post on the Debt-free board suggesting that some people in debt could benefit from reading the 'gambling' board, and within 5 minutes it was moved to the gambling board (where it was totally irrelevant, for obvious reasons).

Why this prejudice against gambling? Nearly every 'special offer' out there is designed to make money out of those taking advantage of it, otherwise businesses wouldn't use them. When Heinz put their baked beans on BOGOF in tesco, is that because they are being charitable? Of course not, it is because they have calculated that the loss on the BOGOF will be more than outweighed by people being converted to Heinz beans. Yet if I posted such an offer on here, I would probably get thanks for it. So why treat gambling offers differently?

It goes without saying that people shouldn't gamble with their own money, but I think that posters should be allowed to make their own decisions on gambling offers, and not be 'protected' from genuine money saving opportunities by paranoid moderation of the boards.

gritts

I'm addicted to matched betting. Tim L's post tempted me and then 2 years ago a bookmaker offered to match my first bet with a free bet and that was it. Now i'm hooked! Everyday I look at gambling forums, search for new bookmaker accounts, check odds, check my gambling bank accounts, etc, etc. I'm totally and utterly addicted and several thousand pounds richer. And I enjoy it.

I only wish I could turnover as much as Tim.

Can't you become addicted to anything?

In which case a credit card stoozing post could led some to sign up to numerous credit cards and then realizing they now have £10k worth of credit go and blow it and become some sort of spendaholic. A post about saving £20 off Mcdonalds 'food' could cause some to become obese ('Supersize Me' film for proof an offer like that could be the start of a long road to obesity). I won't mention the posts about cheap / bogof booze. 'The first one's free'.

Lets keep a bit of balance.

Deleted_User - if you want to do some serious money saving/making check out the board. Gambling it is not.

ag359

The bit of Deleted_User's post that made me the laugh the most was the bit about being bombarded with emails...in reality, the majority of emails I get from bookies and casinos are for further risk-free offers - a source of even greater profit. Not only that, but nearly every bookie that I have used (and certainly all of the reputable ones) make it pretty easy to remove your account from their mailing list, so if you don't want the future offers, you can do that.

There's nothing like judging something you've know nothing about!

thor

Absolutely!! I look forward to emails from all the casinos and bookies I have signed up for cause I manage to make money from about half of them(for example I have just made £340 in a few hours from a recent ladbrokes Games offer). Sure if you are weak willed then you could get sucked in to losing money online but then as has been pointed out stoozing can also be a very dangerous game and nobody has been up in arms about that being promoted on this site. I think that if after reading of all the warnings about gambling you still go ahaed and blow your money then you will probably get addicted to something destructive sooner or later anyway and won't need the catalyst of the matched betting diaries to get you going. Anyway MSE's gambling forum is extremely tame compared to rpoints where you can really get the know how on how to exploit all these offers.

innovate

Deleted_User, unless you know you cannot control yourself and cannot follow a simple guidance document, I could recommend that you try matched betting for yourself.

You are absolutely right that gambling, or even only betting, can become a destructing addiction - but ignoring the subject on MSE doesn't protect people from the danger. Anybody prone to being irresponsible with money can find plenty of exposure on the net, in news papers, high street bookies etc etc.

I think it's goodness that there is a dedicated MSE board for it, because it's one of very few (if not the only) places on the web and in the media (news papers etc) that give people sound advice on how an individual can make money in a multi-billion dollar industry. There is plenty of good advice on the board about things you shouldn't do, and the board is well 'policed' so scams don't get posted. The whole point about the board is to show people how they can make money in a low-risk, or even risk-free, way.

If, after having tried it for yourself, you still have concerns, I am sure a constructive discussion would ensue.