Lottery Addiction

I don't gamble. I don't gamble because I'll get addicted to it. I played one hand of Black Jack at Turning Stone once, got dealt 20, dealer hit 21. But after the hand, I wanted that rush again. It seemed so easy to win, all you have to do is get lucky, and hope the dealer doesn't get lucky. That rush of hitting 20, knowing that odds are, the dealer won't beat that, then the crushing 21 being hit, then the nearly overwhelming desire to play again, to make up for that loss...it's too easy to get addicted.

I played Black Jack another time at a card club on the NY/PA border, but that was during the Super Bowl, and I would have played poker if I could have been able to watch the game from the table. The hands were only $2 each, and I knew the $20 I set aside would be eventually lost, so any notion of me winning was put aside.

I play poker a lot, but that is not gambling, not if you're good at it anyway. I have a strategy that wins, and skills that allow me to make proper decisions. Example: folding pocket Queens when someone has Aces, calling with 3rd pair and a 2 kicker when someone is betting their flush draw.

I am addicted to lottery tickets, which is gambling. But I know I will not win anything, ever, most likely. Whenever MegaMillions is over $100 million, I always buy a ticket. Whenever it is over $300 million, I buy 5 tickets. Tuesday, the drawing is for $355+ million. I have 6 tickets (Hess gave me a 6th one for free). I enjoy thinking of the things I could do with that money. Buy a house on Cape Cod for my mother, pay all my tuition and loans, go to grad school, play the $300 Min game at Turning Stone, go to Best Buy with an 18 wheel truck and buy all sorts of shit, open a DP Dough type of place in Boston for the college kids to drop $6.50 on calzones at 2 AM, fly to London, get season tickets to the Red Sox, shit buy a small part of the Red Sox, start a retirement fund, start a production company, buy a parking permit, get a souped up V8 for my car, and so on.

I won't win, the odds are ridiculously high against it. But if I didn't buy the ticket, I'd always think "What if...?" And there's no disappointment when the numbers I have aren't even close to the winning numbers. The odds of winning any prize are 40 to 1. Those are the same odds of flopping three of a kind with a pocket pair, and then turning or rivering four of a kind. Not a great investment. But I can dream. And I can satisfy my lust for action, which might otherwise be satisfied at a $20 Black Jack table, where I'd probably lose more money, and if I did get lucky, win a lot less.