What's with the meme about Wall Street being "gambling" anyways?

[ddeclue]

Real gambling has rules that everybody knows up front and that everybody follows.

In real gambling everybody has access to the same level of information, the same transparency is provided to all the players.

Slots or blackjack (provided nobody is card counting) or poker constitutes "gambling".

What they do on Wall Street is NOT "gambling"... somebody owes Vegas and Atlantic City an apology..

:rofl:

[Ikonoklast]

1. The House ALWAYS wins.

You may score a small victory or two, but in the long run, odds are always against you.

Stocks used to be an investment. Now they're just speculation.

[ddeclue]

2. Yeah the house always DOES win in Vegas or Atlantic City..

but at least the rules are the same for everybody and nobody gets to peek at the cards in the shoe like they do down on Wall Street.

:rofl:

[Ikonoklast]

5. Cards are not where the real money is.

Slots are what pays the light bill at a casino.

And they rig those all the time.

Just like Wall Street. If you ain't on the inside, you're just a mark.

[Joe Fields]

11. Slot machines are "set" by slot attendants, by order of the casino

to pay out a specific percentage over the lifetime of the machine. They aren't "rigged," as you imply. Of course they are set for the house advantage. Casinos are in business to make money. But anyone, at any given time has a real chance of hitting a major jackpot. I have done so, and know many other people who have.

Wall St. is "rigged."

[rwheeler31]

3. Uh it's gaming, and you do not tell the chumps

or your fired.

[readmoreoften]

4. Cramer even admits it has nothing to do with fundamentals.

They just drive stocks up and down.

[leftofthedial]

6. yup. Wall Street is just straight-up theft.

[catnhatnh]

7. Actually I always laughed about card counters....

Let me get this straight mafia boys-you treat someone as an illegal cheat because they are smart AND pay attention....I think it should be illegal for a casino to ban them.

[ContinentalOp]

8. It probably is. See the movie 21?

I think they just take them out back, kick the shit out of them and tell them not to show their faces in this town again.

[ddeclue]

9. The movie is a Hollywood-ization of the real story

and I was really disappointed with it. It tried to hard to sex-up the story and make it interesting when the real story was plenty interesting.

In reality it would be damned hard to consistently win by counting even if you didn't get caught and the casinos have gotten pretty good at picking out the counters and throwing them out.

They can't legally take you out back and beat the crap out of you but I'm not saying this never happened (or happens) but they certainly can legally issue you a trespass warning as it is their casino and it is private property.

Doug D.
Disclaimer: not an attorney!

[catnhatnh]

15. Actually, if you are interested in this kind of thing....

(gambling and what constitutes "cheating") you might look up a book called "The Eudaemonic Pie"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie
Which was an early attempt by a "college crew" to miniaturize computer components and game roulette wheels (it worked!) I always wondered about the ethics of the attempt....in case you wondered the edge was almost no wheels are truly level.

[Joe Fields]

13. That's not how it works at all.

In the state of Nevada, a casino has the right to ask a patron to leave, if they feel that their play is too strong for the casino. (meaning that, if they suspect you are counting cards and you are winning a substantial amount of money. In some cases, a card counter can be banned) But counting is not illegal.

Usually, though, if a casino suspects a player of card counting, the pit boss will instruct the dealer to employ a variety of methods to discourage the counter. This would include shuffling the cards more often, cutting a larger percentage of the deck, frequently changing dealers, suddenly closing tables, etc...

[specimenfred1984]

10. The difference is between gambling and speculation

In gambling the "player" loses everything they put up for the bet if they lose the bet, in speculation the "player" can exit the position and still have some money left if the bet starts to move against them. The problem with speculation is there is a huge amount of misinformation the "player" receives from numerous propaganda sources, many of whom are attempting to rig the "table" in their favor.

[ddeclue]

12. Excelllently stated! Kudos! nt

[lapfog_1]

14. poker is not even gambling.

Poker, as has been proven over and over, is a game of skill, with some small element of luck. But mostly skill.

That's why you see the same names at the top of tournament leader boards and payouts time after time.

Blackjack requires a modest amount of skill to know the correct play for any given two cards and the one card the dealer
is showing, if you play it perfectly, you are only about a 3 to 5 percent dog (underdog) to the house.

Craps, if you can bet pass/don't pass with bid odds (a backing bet that pays even money sometimes 10X of the line bet) can
reduce the house odds to something like 1.5 percent (you lose an average of a $1.50 for every $100 wagered over time).

And so on.

Wall street is a rigged game and the small investor has almost no shot. However, it is not a zero or negative sum game
like casino games (even poker) and, therefore, can give the smart small investor a chance to consistently win (by knowing
that it is rigged and knowing when to get out).

[ddeclue]

16. Did you see the story (I think 60 Minutes or Dan Rather Reports) on the online poker scandal

where they were able to prove statistically that the winners were hacking the system and reading the other players cards so that they'd always know how to bet?

It was fascinating.

Doug D.

[lapfog_1]

17. Much like electronic voting systems, I never trusted online

gaming systems.

Of course, I've had dealers "mechanic" the deck in a live casino too.

One time, without any pre-arrangement, a dealer that I was friendly with put pocket sevens in my hand and pocket Aces in
another players hand. It was my first time playing at $15/$30 level in a card room (this was 15 years ago or so).

She winked at me before the hand was dealt.

The flop was A77. I won over $300 from the other player.

She win on break a little later and told me to meet her in the parking lot where she then wanted 1/2 of my winnings. I was
mortified. I didn't turn her in, but I did find the guy I beat and gave him his money back. She was fired later.

Cheating always happens, much like voting fraud. But without computers, it's really hard to institutionalize it.