Gamblers Anonymous

Do you know the difference between a gambler and a speculator? It’s actually a thin line of difference. One who is known to take a gamble on sports, horse racing, visiting casinos is branded as a gambler. The other type of people one who do some analysis and know what they are doing on forex trading, stocks, property etc is known to be a speculator. Today I brought this topic up is of course not to test your intelligence, but to alert our forex traders that you are pure speculators and not gamblers!

Often people will mix up gambling with forex trading, true that they may seem like friends, but definitely not the same family. However, they have some similarities, both have the possibility of losing more money and winning more money. They also have uncertainties over the future. The difference here is that gambling does not have a set of data to analyze and you can’t increase your chance of winning, it’s pure luck. For forex trading, you will need to analyze the past history using forex indicators etc, though it does not confirm a sure win. But it will definitely increase the chance of success. I know of many successful forex traders who make a living out of it (I’m one of them), but have you heard of gamblers making a living? I only know that they have to owe a lot of debts in their lives.

Some of the beginners who has just starting to learn forex think that they can make quick and easy profits from the forex market. This is totally not true and forex trading is not gambling. Firstly you must have the right mindset if you decide to embark on the currency trading journey, treating this as your own legal business. Secondly, your trading decisions must not be gut feelings, you do not think or feel whether the price will up or down. Thirdly, you must only be dependent on your forex strategy and forex trading systems, and not luck!

Make use of all the resources you need to become a successful trader, there is no easy way out and you must learn it through experience. I can give you all the forex tips and strategies you want, but you will really need to get tough with the forex market to learn valuable stuffs. But no worries at all, I will be here to give you all the help that you need in this business.

Most recreational gamblers don’t need to worry much about taxes. They usually lose more than they win during the year and rarely win enough at any one time for the IRS to find out about it. However, if you gamble and had a big, big win last year, you could be headed for tax trouble. This is because the casino or other gambling establishment may have told the IRS how much you won.

Unfortunately for gamblers, casinos, race tracks, state lotteries, bingo halls and other gambling establishments located in the United States are required to tell the IRS if you win more than a specified (relatively large) dollar amount on any single bet or play. They do this by filing a tax form called Form W2-G with the IRS. You’re given a copy of the form as well.

When a W2-G must be filed depends on the type of game you play. For example, the casino must file a W2-G if you win $1,200 or more at a time playing slots; but only if you win $1,500 or more at keno. Thus, if you have one or more wins exceeding the reporting threshold, the IRS will know that you won at least that much gambling income during the year. If this income is not listed on your tax return, you’ll likely hear from the IRS.

More than 4 million Form W-2Gs are filed each year. If you have one, you need to know what to do or you the IRS could claim you owe taxes on the money, even if you lost more than you won during the year. There are three things it’s crucial that you understand:

First, if, like the vast majority of people, you’re a recreational gambler, you’re supposed to report all your gambling winnings on your tax return every year. You may not, repeat NOT, subtract your losses from your winnings and only report the amount left over, if any. You’re supposed to report every penny you win, even if your losses exceeded your winnings for the year. Gamblers who don’t report at least as much as shown in their Form W-2Gs usually get audited.

Second, although you must list all your winnings on your tax return, you don’t have to pay tax on the full amount. You are allowed to list your annual gambling losses as an itemized deduction on Schedule A of your tax return. If you lost as much as, or more than, you won during the year, the loss will offset any tax on your winnings. Even if you lost more than you won, you may only deduct as much as you won during the year. However, you get no deduction for your losses at all if you don’t itemize your deductions-just one of the ways gamblers are badly treated by the tax law.

Finally, you must be able to document the amount of both your winnings and losses. You’re supposed do this by keeping detailed records of all your gambling wins and losses during the year.

This is where most gamblers slip up-they fail to keep adequate records (or any records at all). As a result, you can end up owing taxes on winnings reported to the IRS even though your losses exceed your winnings for the year. This has happened to many gamblers who failed to keep records.

What to do? If, like most gamblers, you haven’t kept good records, you need to gather as much information as you can about how much you won and lost gambling last year. There are many ways to do this. For example, if you gambled with a rewards card, the casino or other gambling establishment will have a computer record of your betting. Next, you (or your tax preparer) must prepare your return carefully and correctly to avoid IRS scrutiny.

List all of your winnings in the income portion of IRS Form 1040; and your losses–up to the amount of your winnings–as a miscellaneous itemized deduction on Schedule A. If you do this, your return should fly through the IRS without attracting undue attention.

“Care to make a wager?” I said this to a friend during a discussion we were having. He quickly responded that, he was sure that I knew he wasn’t a gambling man. His answer completely took me by surprise. I was utterly stumped. Here was a man, I thought, who reaps the benefits of a democratic, capitalist society and he was saying that he did not gamble.

So, I inquired, “What is gambling?”

“I just don’t bet and stuff like that,” he responded.

My definition of gambling for years has been any wager, bet, or proffered material/service in a situation of chance in hopes of making a profit or gain. My friend, I knew, has been dabbling in the stock market for years now. Does he not consider the stock market a form of gambling? Within the context of my definition, I can readily identify the fundamental markers. Take, for example, if my friend takes money (his or other’s) and invests into a stock that is selling at $50 a share. In all respects, my friend would not be buying into this stock to lose. So let us say that my friend buys a $50 share and the stock doubles to $100, my friend has just made a profit. The fact that he could have lost his $50 expresses the chance he took. This is gambling in all sense of the term.

A car salesman is a gambler; anyone who opens a business is a gambler because they made a wager by putting money into an idea and hoped that in doing so they would make a significant return. It is no wonder that Jean Falzon, Executive Director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, can make the statement that, “gambling is now a national pastime.” She can make such a statement because our whole system is built on making money or taking chances.

When I mentioned this to my friend, he flat out disagreed and said I was taking the meaning of gambling out of context. To bolster his position he said that, “only dice games, card games, and slot machines should be considered gambling.”

I countered with the question, what about the lottery? Is not a casino a business? Is not a clothing store a business? All of them are out to make a profit; is there a chance that they could loose their investment? The mere system of capitalism is gambling.

“How?” he demanded.

I told him, to lay in wait for something to happen in hopes of making a profit is capitalizing. This involves chance and a hope of making a profit whether monetary or material gain.

I held my hand up indicating him to hold his response then I plunged into yet another fact. Do you know that according to the National Council on Problem Gambling, “over 70% of U.S. adults report gambling at least once in the past year?” Where do you think this appetite for gambling comes from? It is embedded in our capitalist culture.

Let’s face it, you too are a gambler, just remember every time you try to avoid stopping for gas when you are running late but your gas tank is running low. You are taking a chance in hopes of getting to your destination without running out of gas. Your possible gain is the time you saved by not going to the gas station. In all actuality, you just gambled with yourself to see if you could make it to your destination without the added stop.

My point of view may seem as odd to some as it did to my friend, at first. What I tried to explain to him is this: just because he does not go to casinos or poker halls does not mean that he is not a gambler. There are compulsive gamblers and those that are action seekers (they usually just play for the action, not the win). Maybe he does not fit into either of these categories, but because he is usually on the computer checking for the slightest change in a company’s stock prices, he has become compulsive, addictive even.

This addition runs even deeper, it threatens our youth. According to Pat Fowler, Project Director of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling, [the] promotion of lottery, horse racing, or bingo leads “young people to think it is OK to do [it].” But in my opinion this is only half-way true. While promotion might make these avenues of gambling more popular it does not overshadow the biggest examples of what drives our society to gamble, and that is our education, which is a gamble within itself. We are taught to reach for the stars, to aim for the sky, to take a chance. This tautology is meant to prepare us for life in society, but just reinforces our get-rich-quick attitude. Taking a chance on the stock market or capitalizing on a business idea, all require a percentage of chance and investment.

What I was trying to explain to my friend was the fact that he did not immediately see the connection because according to the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, “pathological gambling is often a hidden disease.” And as Alec Roy, MD, a psychiatrist formerly at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes that pathological gamblers have lower levels of norepinephrine than normal gamblers; “norepinephrine is secreted under stress, arousal, or thrill, so pathological gamblers gamble to make up for their underdosage.” So the next time you wonder why it feels good to run to the computer and check the latest price change of your stock, or the next time you convince yourself that your business needs more advertising because it feels good, remember your norepinephrine level because this is gambling.

My friend nodded in what seemed like a dejected agreement. So, to drive my point home, I reminded him of the time he ran the red light.

He smiled and said, “Maybe I’m a gambler after all.”

I smiled back at him. Society has created a gambler in all of us. We all seek to raise our norepinephrine levels for thrill and excitement, or chance and gain.

Works Cited

“G2E Flyer.” National Council on Problem Gambling. [http://www.ncpgambling.org/media/pdf/g2e_flyer.pdf]

“Problem Gambling” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_gambling

“Recognizing gambling addiction.” Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery. http://www.addictionrecov.org/recoggam.htm

Works Unfound
Jean Falzon, Executive Director of the National Council on Problem Gambling
Pat Fowler, Project Director of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling

When I worked for Ladbrokes many years ago, I was running a shop on a council estate with a reputation for extreme night-time violence in one of the rougher neighbourhoods in south-west London. The customers were mixture of colourful characters, high rollers of questionable background, and at least one was a professional hitman. The local pub was a no-go zone where the local police were known to smoke dope. The previous manager of the shop told me to keep a bundle of cash in my shoes when I went to the bank in the morning, “for compensation”. It was your general rough-house.

There was a regular customer there who was a genuine nice guy who seemed to have everything, certainly in comparison to the majority of people in that area – he had a beautiful wife and lovely kid, he was fit and healthy, played a good standard of football (his true passion) and had his own business running a garage.

But he had no idea how to gamble, and he was bitten by the bug so bad that a demon would take him over. He could not separate the act of gambling with the money when he was winning and when he was losing he would deny the existence of money so that he could convince himself that he was not losing – he was going to hell in a handcart.

One day his demon manifested itself in such an extreme form that I had to take drastic action: It was a Saturday morning and he was gambling on the Hackney and Crayford morning BAGs (greyhounds) meetings. And doing quite well. In fact he pretty much cleared out my morning float and then some. Eventually, about 12.30pm, he had hit the bottom of my till and I couldn’t pay him anymore.

Knowing that he played football on Saturday afternoon I offered to keep hold of his slip for safe keeping and pay him out at the end of the day. That way – this being before night and Sunday racing – he would have at least a day of peace with cash not burning a hole in his pocket.

Off he went, perfectly happy to have hit the bookies, but it wasn’t long before the demon was back and begging for succour. That afternoon he rang three friends and begged them to persuade me to cash his money so they could proxy bet for him. He even rang me up himself at half-time from the touchline during his regular Saturday game and begged me to put a bet on for him. I said no.

But, sure enough, he was back in the shop an hour later – still in his football kit – and he spent an hour giving me back as much of his money as he could. I eventually kicked him out of the shop and told him to come back on Monday.

I wish there was a happy end to the story, but there just isn’t. I wish I could tell you that he saw the error of his ways, or he won so big one day that he could retire from gambling and live a happy and fruitful life. I wish.

But no. He left my shop that afternoon, went home, put a suit on and went up West to the casinos in West Kensington and lost the lot – a redistribution of wealth from one bookie to another.

His wife and little kid went without money for the last time and left, his garage went to pot in a pile of gambling debts. The last time I saw him he was trying to blag money of my customers. Last I heard he was living rough..

Good intentions

Throughout his fall – and it happened rapidly in the months after that topsy turvy Saturday – one all-encompassing factor was staring me in the face: this poor man is not gambling he is just unhappy and is using betting to fill a void.

Let me just say now: if you see any symptoms of addiction in your attitude to gambling – lying, self-deceit, cutting your budget of essentials to feed your gambling habit, stealing, mood swings – then betting is not for you.

You need to log on to the Gamble Aware website and follow their advice to getting help. If you become addicted, gambling is the most serious of addictions, it is not to be taken lightly.. get help.

His behaviour was not how people should be reacting in this highly-business orientated environment. He was being overly emotional about the process of investing his money in something for possible reward. Would you, I thought, go into a bank and open a savings account because you like the colour of their sign, or invest in a company because you fancy the company’s head of human resources. Probably not.

His demise led me to believe that not everyone has the wherewithal to deal with what can be a highly intoxicating and addictive hobby. Very few people come out of it with more money in their pockets, that’s for sure. While some don’t mind this: another customer in a different shop used to hate collecting winnings, for him it was a way to keep his brain occupied, not a means to money, others need to win.

If you need to win, you need a good moral code to follow, a bible to refer to when things don’t seem to be going your way.

Follow my six rules of betting and you won’t end up letting gambling run and then ruin your life.

1.Every bet is a losing bet (formerly known as: don’t bet what you can’t afford)

Ah, don’t bet what you can’t afford. What utter glorious nonsense. The first person to ever utter this platitudinous rubbish should be taken out back of the bookies and summarily shot.

What does it mean? Don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose. Surely you can’t afford to lose anything? And if your one betting strategy is to bet what you can afford to lose, then you have thrown the one thing into the transaction that is guaranteed to leave you profitless: placing emotion inside the bet.

By building a complete picture for a bet that involves your own finances it becomes personal, and when a bet becomes personal all manner of complications enter the equation. What that half-baked idiot should have said was: Expect to lose every bet, that way you are detached from the money and you can concentrate properly on the matter in hand.

How many times have you heard stories of accountants who can’t control their own finances or doctors who don’t look after their health. More than once, I bet. When it is your job, it is a business transaction: no emotion, no mistakes. When it is your finances, health, etc, emotion is in the game, and the decision-making process becomes a lot more complicated.Take emotion out of your gambling (never bet on your favourite team, for example, it clouds your judgment. Why do you think bookies were very quick to put betting booths in football stadiums, they are huge cash cows) and you are on your way.

2. No such thing as a perfect system

There are hundreds of them on the internet, and the world and his wife will tell you that they never lose because they have a system, but the perfect system just does not exist.

The bookies have something called the 110 per cent market, in which regardless of the result they pick up a profit of ten per cent. Of course, ten per cent is their minimum goal and in my six years as a betting shop manager and supervisor at Ladbrokes I never worked in a shop, or group of shops that didn’t make at least the company’s minimum profit margin of 20 per cent gross. It’s usually closer to 30 per cent.

While some people may think that they have a system that can beat the bookies, they don’t: the bookies are very sensitive to changes in their market percentage and will change prices accordingly. They constantly monitor each others prices to be aware of people looking to bet across a market. Some systems claim that by searching hundreds of bookies they can find as low as a 92 per cent market, where a punter, by putting a percentage on each possible result at different bookies, can make an eight per cent minimum profit.

In the unlikely event that this occurs, you have to be pretty quick before the anomaly is closed, and shell out large amounts of money to make it profitworthy. Plus, the risk is that the loop closes while you are placing bets across the firms – and you end up sitting on a losing bet.

3. No substitute for knowledge

If you don’t know what you’re betting on, then you have no chance of winning. There are those firms that say they are profitable on the football (soccer, if you like) but have absolutely no idea what they are betting on. It’s all in the statistics. One website had the gall to suggest that if you crunch the numbers, work out all the variables, then there is no luck involved. Rot. Football fans know that it is not about 22 players, two teams. It is about weather, refs, fans, the pitch, how confident the star striker is feeling, whether the keeper had an argument with his wife the night before. Sure, there is no harm in punching in all the figures, but like everything in life there is no substitute for knowledge. Knowing.

4. Percentage accuracy is a load of old shoe shine

My favourite is the number of tipster sites that claim to have “70 per cent accuracy” or above as if it was the holy grail of football betting. One of my favourite ones is a football prediction website that miraculously predicted last season Chelsea had a 68 per cent chance of beating Reading at home (lucky 1-0 win) or Liverpool had only a 25 per cent chance of beating Portsmouth at home (they won 4-1).

If you really want to spend your money on that kind of dross, then good luck to you. You’re far better picking up a good football book that gets to the heart of what football is about:

I would suggest Brilliant Orange by David Winner (Bloomsbury), which is an excellent essay in the philosophy of the game in general but, in particular, the Dutch total football regime.

Left Foot Forward by Garry Nelson is an excellent insight into the day-to-day life of a journeyman footballer. It laughs in the face of anyone who says that there is no space for randomness in predicting football games.

And Defending the Honour of Kiev by Andy Dougan if you need to understand football’s importance in European society.

And if reading is not your thing, get The History of Football: The Beautiful Game box set for a comprehensive guide to the game.

5. No substitute for experience

It took me watching literally hundreds and hundreds of live games and interviewing dozens and dozens of footballers, managers, pundits and fans as a football reporter to get an idea about the game.

It took me six years as a betting shop manager, two years as a professional gambler (a long time ago, and it all went up in smoke through lack of experience), and almost seven years as a football tipster to get a hook on this gambling malarkey.

Don’t let anyone tell you it is easy: to be a successful gambler one has to maintain a constant vigil over oneself, a constant vigil over prices, keep up-to-date with the news, and pour over stats and analysis from as many sources as possible.

It is possible to win without proper investigation: in football you generally have a 1 in 3 chance of success – it’s like tossing a coin with the chances of it landing on its end about a 3/1 chance.

6. The most vulnerable punter is a winning one

When you’re up, you feel unbeatable, you are on top of the world, nothing can stop you. Your pockets are full, next month’s rent is paid, what could possibly go wrong.

Stop. Think about this: how could your judgment be anything other than impaired with all these wonderful things going through your head. Poker players understand this: they actual play the game in a different way when they have lots of chips. More confident, more aggressive.

Now, once you’ve thought about all that. Stop. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy the winning feeling. Got over it? Good. Now you can get back to it.

Think of it as footballers the world over do when they score first. Jogging back to the halfway line, elated and on top of the world, it takes someone to remind you of your job. “0-0″. “It’s still 0-0.”

Get back to the zone you were in when you were winning. You’re still losing. Every bet is a loser. It’s still 0-0.