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Comment by badRNG | Hacker News Reader

I'm completely confused here. I have always assumed gambling addiction is centered on winning it big, to recoup prior losses, or to otherwise change one's station in life. None of these things are possible on these apps.

I'm actually at a point of disbelief. I simply don't believe that gamblers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game they know will never make them any money. I'm open to the idea, but it certainly strains credulity. Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that?

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The act of spinning the wheel is its own reward, dopamine wise. The anticipation of winning it big. The colorful displays. The hope as the wheel looks like it's going to land on the big payout. Even losing is its own rush.

And if you do win... can cashing out for boring dollars ever compare to the excitement of being allowed to spin the wheel again - for the chance of an even bigger prize?

It's a finely tuned dopamine loop that's been perfected over centuries, designed with one goal: to keep susceptible people pulling the lever. The house, after all, doesn't win if you leave.

You overestimate the human potential to be a rational actor.

You pay for the dopamine hit you get when you "win." The money - in real gambling - is a nice bonus.

But it's the hope of a neurotransmitter cascade in the brain that's really in charge.

See variable reinforcement schedules: https://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning/reinforcement/

So was I, but it's the social aspects - the clubs, and maintaining your standing in the club structure - that are the incentive.

I can certainly see that being enough to persuade some people to spend hundreds, maybe even thousands. But there are always outliers, which is why I can swallow the idea - even though it's bonkers - that somebody might spend $400k over 8 years, or still be spending $600/month even though they know it's bad for them.

You’d be surprised. From experience most people I’ve known with gambling addictions could go on the worlds longest luck streak, win all the money in the world, and then figure out a way to gamble more. The station in life thing just gets redefined and redefined because the addiction is to (imo) the chemical madhouse that goes on in your brain when you’re in the thick of it.

>Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that?

It's addiction, it isn't rational.

i mentioned this in another comment, but there are two kinds of gambler.

the stereotypically "male" kind wants to take risks, win big, prove they are skilled, etc. and will tend to play games like roulette or blackjack, or poker, or bet on sports and horses.

there is a different kind, associated more with slot machines and female gamblers, where they're not playing to win, they're playing to keep playing -- the slot machine produces a mental state that they find compelling and difficult to leave.

from the way people describe it it's comparable to "one more turn" in video games.

From what I've read, gamblers are actually addicted to losing. They expect it and keep coming back, which is why a zero-win game is addictive, too.

My cynical take: there’s probably a nontrivial amount of money laundering going on through these apps. Especially prevalent in any game that accepts “gift cards” as payment. Typically you’d pay people cash in hand to go buy a $1000 worth of gift cards in cash.

My non-cynical take: gambling addiction seems pretty prevalent in at least American society and this is just the market responding to those conditions.

> there’s probably a nontrivial amount of money laundering going on through these apps.

You can't really launder money through an app that offers no way to get money back out of it.

If there were a way to "gift" coins to people, which would allow them to be sold on sites like eBay, then you could launder money, because you'd be able to buy coins from Big Fish, and sell them elsewhere at a discount. You'd lose money on the flip but then, when you launder money, you always lose some portion of it (often quite a large portion).

(I don't know enough about these apps to know whether that's an option or not, but I suspect not.)

The only way Big Fish could be used to launder money is if they were owned by the people doing the laundering, who would then have a route to get money "through" the company. For third parties I don't think it's a possibility, unless they were in cahoots with the owners.

Actual gambling apps would provide a much better option for laundering money, which is perhaps a bigger motivator for regulation of that industry than addiction is. Or at least they would in a cash environment. Apps maybe less so because there's always a paper trail for the money (not to say it can't be done though).

Take all this with a pinch of salt because it's hardly my area of expertise but the main point stands: to launder money you have to have a way of getting money both into and out of a business.

Apologizes, I meant to say that if you owned the application, it would be a super easy way to launder. Especially due to the sheer volume of similar apps on the play store and numerous grey-market giftcard processors.

dirty cash -> giftcards -> casino app -> app developer

That certainly sounds plausible.

I wonder if a 30% cost for big players is considered acceptable in money laundering. North Korea laundered $81 million (that they stole from banks) through Philippine casinos [1], so it isn't an outrageous idea that an app could be used for money laundering.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-03/a-baccara...

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