Casino Fact and Fiction Part 1: The Arguments

Gambling in and of itself is a fairly mainstream activity, but the idea of a casino is a bit more polarizing. While the vast majority of people have no problem vacationing at or visiting a casino they simply don’t want it in their own backyard. The reason people are so averse to local casinos has to do with a long campaign of misinformation, a campaign I will attempt to set straight below.

Let me start by saying that I am a casino advocate. First off, I believe adults should be allowed to spend their money any way they see fit, and the 1% of the population that are problem gamblers shouldn’t prevent me from gambling any more than the 1% of the population that are alcoholics should prevent you from having a drink –I’ll delve deeper into the notion that access increases problem gamblers later on in this series. We need to stop legislating behavior in adults; it has never worked and will never work. Anti-casino groups are no different than the temperance movement of the early 1900’s; your heart may be in the right place but your minds most certainly are not.

Secondly, I’m a poker player; I like to play poker, and I’m pretty good at it. Ask me the house edge in any mainstream casino game and I can tell you the odds. If you play perfect blackjack the house edge is about .5%, which means for every $100 you gamble you’ll win $99.50 in the long-run; play $10 a hand blackjack for two hours (which is about 500 hands) and you should expect to lose $25. Of course some nights you’ll win $300 and some nights you’ll lose $400, but in the long-run you’ll lose a whopping $.05 per hand playing blackjack –assuming you play perfect blackjack strategy and don’t rely on your “gut” for your decisions.

Just like you know that going to dinner and a movie will cost you $100, I know precisely how much I will lose in a casino in that same amount of time. Of course I rarely play anything but poker, the only beatable game in a casino, because of the house edge – yes, I’m a gambling advocate who doesn’t like to gamble.

You Have your Statistics and I Have Mine

Statistics are a tricky business and people have learned how to manipulate data to paint the picture of whatever it is they are trying to sell you. Like a baseball agent negotiating with a team over a new contract, when it comes to statistics regarding the impact of casinos both sides are pushing their own agenda –“My client is the best home run hitter in the game, he hit a home run every five bats last year”, “I understand that but your client only had five at bats last year.”

How was it that Nate Silver predicted the 2012 election outcomes near flawlessly? The answer is quite simple, he didn’t rely on one poll, or one factor like the unemployment number, he looked at the entirety of it all: Historical trends, aggregate polling, and so on. Proponents and opponents of casinos need to do the same; otherwise we end up with partisan bickering, with one side slamming their cherry-picked facts down on the table and the other disputing it with their own cherry-picked facts.

Casino opponents will find the worst-performing casino and say, “see this place will actually be a drain on the economy.” Casino proponents will do the exact opposite, finding the best-performing casinos.

Casino developers are going to tell you how bright and sunny everything will be with their fancy models and slideshows complete with manicured lawns that Augusta National would be envious of, while opponents paint a more morbid picture of zombie gamblers breaking into cars and houses in a ten-mile radius looking for Blackjack Match Play coupons. The truth is, neither of these visions is correct, but that’s ok because like most casino games, this argument isn’t a zero-sum game; it’s not a matter of extremes. When we look at your data and their data we get a much clearer picture of what to expect. But if you’ve ever been to a casino you already know what to expect! A safe, relatively clean, environment, with the same assortment of people you’d find at Target or Walmart on a Sunday afternoon.

In Part 2 of this series I’ll take a look at crime rate myths, the effect on jobs and the economy, and of course problem gamblers.

Read Part 3