MB - “Odds are you’ll lose - Addictions expert tells it like it is”
By ROSS ROMANIUK, SUN MEDIA, Winnipeg Sun, Wed, June 6, 2007
Charlette says thinking positively and intuitive feelings won’t help you beat very long odds. (JASON HALSTEAD, Sun Media)
If you think the bingo numbers and spinning lemons are lining up in your favour, Val Charlette has a warning for you — the gambling gods are not.
The Addictions Foundation of Manitoba consultant wants just about anyone trying their hand at bingo, video lottery terminals or other gaming machines to ultimately recognize the risks of overconfidence in “their own efforts” to beat very long odds with unproven methods or unrealistic hopes. Because the most proven science of gambling numbers is that they’re stacked against you, she said.
“When you’re playing bingo, do you think positively? Do you think that thinking positively is going to result in a win?” Charlette, a gambling prevention educator with the AFM in Thompson, asked a crowd of dozens of representatives gathered at the National Aboriginal Gambling Awareness Conference in Winnipeg yesterday. “Are there gambling gods listening to my thoughts or my prayers? Probably not.”
It was a sobering message about the dangers of wonky strategies and “looking for that power within” when shoving coin after coin into a ringing, flashing gizmo.
A long list of red-flag mindsets were highlighted — selective recall in “remembering a win and forgetting or glossing over losses,” the near-miss notion in “justifying further tries” at a game after appearing to come close in lining up numbers or symbols and “personification” with a game in believing it’s a thinking entity.
As well, Charlette pointed to superstitions in keeping possessions or clothing on hand for luck, as well as cognitive distortion in believing “that every intuitive feeling is going to give them a win.”
IT’S CHANCE
For aboriginal gamblers, such conceptions could become an issue through their “very strong connection to spirituality,” she said. And she said aboriginals sometimes have “the gift of intuition and dreams,” they shouldn’t attempt to use it when chance is a major player. “Every time someone presses a button on a VLT machine, it’s just like when you throw a die. It’s one in six, no matter what.”
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