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Notes -
Bingo.
There was a point at which I realized that I was placing bets on individual hands that was larger than the whole amount I had budgeted for playing. And it was fun. Feeling like a relative high roller, fantasizing about winning enough to, well if not quit my job take a really long, fancy vacation. All while knowing on a fundamental level that I'm playing a game where the odds are deliberately stacked against me so that it isn't rational to expect it to happen. On the other hand, there's probably a few versions of me in different timeline branches who got extremely lucky and were quite happy with the outcome.
I should also point out that I took a brief break between sessions, and when I came back to the table, that's when I lost most of my position, just a string of "bad luck" that contrasted strongly to the winning streak I had been on. So yeah, 'beginners luck' would be the right way to categorize that. And everything about the process is designed to make you feel like you're special and the winning will never end.
I agree... but this sounds impossible to enforce without levels of draconian control of the internet that I am far less comfortable with.
The point I've alluded to is how easy/frictionless it is to transfer money into basically any entity these days.
Perhaps a comparable law could be that in order to play any kind of games that get categorized as 'gambling' you have to physically deposit money with the entity running the game. That is, you must withdraw the amount from your account as cash, physically hold it and carry it to a location, and physically hand it over, vs. simply entering an account number or swiping a card.
This would be almost as good as strictly limiting it to physical locations. And then enforcement can take place at the payment processor level, which STILL has concerns over draconian control, but doesn't require direct surveillance of all users.
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