A Mug's Game: How Internet Gambling Ruined My Life

By NIK

Gambling is big business these days. One of the great commercial successes of the 21st century with its suggestions of easy riches, fabulous bonuses and limitless excitement.
It also ruins lives.
Read the salutary story of one man's financial agony and you will think twice before you place your next bet.
Apart from warning against the perils of online gambling the author also details his experiences of dealing with creditors, debt management, estate agents, confidence tricksters and the terrible curse of senile dementia.
An intensely personal, brave and brutally honest tale which gives an invaluable insight for anyone who might be seduced by the false promises and fraudulent glamour of gambling

• Language: English
• Publisher: NIK
• Release date: May 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310811821

NIK

Nik has published a number of books, including A Mug’s Game: How Online Gambling Ruined My Life; When the Fun Stops: The Modern Plague of Gambling Addiction; Not A Neanderthal but Never a Fluffy the Definitive Edition: 35 Years of Paying for Sex; and My Only Romance: Why I Turned to Paying for Sex.As Nick Evans he has published several works of fiction including: The Enterprise Society: A Tall Tale of the 1980’s; The Beautiful Game: A Football Fantasy; Spare Some Change Please; Seeds of Discord; AA Tonite: Dark Desires; Conchies; Vindicated; Reflections; Green Eyed Monsters; An Illegal Act & Other Short Stories and three books of non fiction: And the Puppy Dog Chased Its Tail: The Ever Decreasing Circles of English Education; How to Pass GCSE English Language with Flying Colours and How to Pass GCSE English Literature with Flying Colours.

Book preview

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A Mug’s Game:

How Internet Gambling Ruined My Life

NIK

© 2014 - 2020 NIK

Contents

Prelude

Beginnings

Interim

Online

Seduction

Background

Goals

Corners

Casino

Depression

Borrowing

Roulette

Help

Slots

More borrowing

Road to Ruin

Highway to Hell

Freedom

Future

Reflections

Epilogue Update

A Happier Final Epilogue

Prelude

I blinked, I gasped. I blinked and gasped some more. It must be some kind of mistake. Surely? Now I knew what it felt like to be one of those lucky lottery winners who claim the fact that they have won a fortune takes ages to sink in. The sum I’d won wasn’t anywhere near that of lottery proportions, but to me, especially at that impoverished time of my life, it was indeed an epic amount.

I blinked once more, still expecting the figure to suddenly disappear as surely as my salary did every month, but no, it was still there. £12,544.36. The figure dancing in front of my eyes like a fairy Godmother, waving her wand to spirit all my troubles away. What made it all the more incredible was that I hadn’t won it on the horses or the football with a complicated multiple bet accumulator, but it had happened in the blink of an eye, on a single spin of an online slot machine. Twelve and a half thousand quid for a nine pounds stake.

The game in question was Monopoly Pass Go. There are three or four online monopoly slots, but Pass Go was the baby which had ‘made my day’ as ‘Dirty Harry’ might have said. If I could have I would have reached right out into the screen and hugged the grey moustached, top hatted little man, the icon of the monopoly game, capering across my screen. After all there had been many a time I’d cursed him as he spirited my stake away; just one of the many online evil genies, who together with my foolish self, were responsible for ruining my life.

This time was one of those rare occasions when I immediately withdrew the winnings and switched the computer off, rather than try to increase my bank balance or, more frequently, chase my losses until the pot was empty and the cupboard was as bare as old Mother Hubbard’s. Of course, as I floated into another room, still not quite believing it until the money was safely nestling in my bank account, my next thought was it would have been over twenty five thousand if only I’d have staked eighteen pounds, such is the acquisitive nature of an inveterate gambler.

Beginnings

When did this curse, this plague, this addiction, this ruination of my life, this sheer unadulterated foolishness begin, and more importantly, why did it begin?

Ever since I can remember my father was a gambler; his Saturday punt on the horses and flutter on the football pools were often the highlights of his week. However, note I said his Saturday punt; rarely would he indulge in the week and Sundays were a day of total closure back then. Although he would gamble when we were on holiday; many was the time I remember my mother being peeved in Skegness or Paignton, our two favoured holiday destinations when I was a child, as he disappeared to the bookies for a couple of hours leaving us to our own devices.

Seldom would he ever stake more than a couple of quid, although of course that would probably be equivalent to twenty pounds or more now, but never did he bang a considerable single stake sum ‘on the nose.’ No, for him it was a combination of horses in complex permutations: Doubles, Trebles, Trixies, Round Robins, Yankees, Canadians, were his modus operandi, the Yankee being a particular favourite of his. There was a time when I knew precisely how all these combination bets worked, such an expert had I become at a young age under my father’s expert tutelage. My old man also didn’t back favourites and wouldn’t touch an odds on horse; no for him it was outsiders all the way.

When I was a kid he would spend several hours every Saturday morning studying the form whilst my mother was being permed at the hairdressers, and frequently he would back a twenty to one winner; unfortunately, he would more often than not have little or nothing to go with it, consequently he never made his fortune. Many was the time I would say to him, ‘As you’re so good selecting outsiders why don’t you bang it all on a single bet on a long odds shot?’ He would respond that he wanted an afternoon’s entertainment on four, five or six races rather than risk blowing his stake all at once. Furthermore, if they all came up he would be quids in; of course, they rarely did. I guess his Saturday flutter was more a bit of fun for him rather than a serious attempt at making money, hence his main concentration on televised races.

Being an ex-miner and former heavy smoker, he suffered severe chest problems and the older he became the more restricted was his mobility, therefore sitting in his favourite armchair watching the horse racing (he did genuinely like horses) was his favourite way of spending a Saturday afternoon. He had once upon a time taken me to football matches, but although he would watch soccer he vastly preferred the turf, and as his health declined and football hooliganism grew he was less inclined to make the trip to the stadium.

The final football game he ever took me to was a promotion six pointer (or in those days four pointer) and was a sell out. We couldn’t get in the stand where my father was accustomed to take me (we would sometimes sit with a mate of his who had a season ticket), consequently we had to watch from the terraces, where until the arrival of all seater stadia, I would devour most of my subsequent football. However, the old man wasn’t enamoured by standing for nearly two hours in his state of health; consequently, although not only was promotion secured that season, but the divisional championship achieved with flying colours (indeed the highest number of points ever for that league up to that time), it was the last match he ever attended. Oh, he promised to take me again the following season, especially when Aston Villa, who at the time were the biggest club ever to fall into the third tier, were in town, but he never did.

I always favoured the footy over the horses, but as time went on I found myself following in my father’s footsteps and gambling on the nags. Funnily enough football betting, the pools excepted, played little part in our gambling at the time, although in later years it would signal the beginning of my downfall.

I was twenty five when my father passed away, and although he had suffered from ill health for as long as I can remember, it still came as a dreadful shock, as it was all over so suddenly. He felt unwell on the Friday, and ironically of all times he fell badly ill on the Saturday afternoon, his favourite time of the week. Rather than wait for the football results, he took to his bed. This suggested he was really ill as the footy results were the highlight of his week, not because he was particularly interested in how the teams went on, but because he hoped to secure the magical eight draws, which in the years before the lottery were everyman’s main route to instant life changing riches. The old man had actually enjoyed a couple of substantial wins (for the time) on the pools before I was born, and he constantly hoped to make it a hat trick, but it was never to be. Maybe I was an unlucky charm?

He was taken to hospital later that evening and he passed away in the early hours of the Monday morning. It was, perhaps fittingly, the last week of the football season, and the team he had taken me to see win the fourth division championship thirteen years before, had, after surviving in the third division all that time (and for a number of those seasons almost achieving promotion again), finished bottom and were relegated. To add insult to injury the visiting team for that final match were Millwall, whose notorious fans, as so often in those days, spectacularly disgraced themselves.

After my dad’s death I continued for a short time to bet on the horses. I don’t know how long this lasted, but I do recall that I had started gambling in the week, which hadn’t really happened much when he was alive. At the time I was working in an office in town, therefore my lunch times were frequently spent in the betting shop. In those days there were three or four to choose from; there are at least double that now.

I graduated to gambling every day for a period, but it was still maybe only a couple of quid each time. Even so that was still a substantial slice of my salary back then. The most I ever made during that stage was sixty odd quid, which I thought a small fortune at the time. I also achieved a fourteen to one winner, which had been common for my father, but was the longest priced winner I ever selected, as I tended to go more for favourites, and even odds on shots. I recall a mate of mine, some years later, once had a five horse accumulator where each selection was odds on, and not a single one of them won. The odds against such a spectacular loss happening must be so long that you’d have thought the bookies would have offered him something back!

As I say I don’t know how long this phase of my gambling lasted, but I started to keep a record, and when I reached a deficit of sixty quid I decided that enough was enough. I immediately quit gambling and barely stepped inside a betting shop again apart from the odd flutter on the Grand National once a year.

I was actually relatively successful with the National, securing a couple of winners and placed horses over the years. It is not that difficult to predict horses that will do well in the world’s most famous steeplechase, or at least to rule out those that won’t. If they can’t stay the distance or are prone to falling they have as much chance as the England footy team have of winning the World cup ever again. This year, 2013, I had my first punt on the National for years as I had a free £5 bet from a newspaper, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered. Most years I don’t even watch it anymore. Although I had lost interest in horseracing, it appeared I hadn’t lost my touch regarding the great steeplechase however; my selection Teaforthree, was leading going into the final fence but tired and finished third, as it was win only I didn’t make anything, but at least it kept my interest in the race until the end.

From the nineties however for the most part I learned to walk past the betting shops without batting the old eyelid; something that I maintained and can still do. How is it then that gambling has ruined my life?

Two words - the internet.

Interim

As I say I barely stepped inside a betting shop after I’d quit, however I distinctly remember one occasion in August 1987 when I bumped into a mate who I’d only met for the first time through a mutual friend in July of 1984, although in that time we’d become good friends. My dad had died in May ‘83 and I don’t believe the gambling phase I described earlier lasted more than a year or two, so this must have been an anomaly. I was on holiday from work and it was just something to do. It was a week night and there was an evening race meeting at Nottingham which we decided to attend on the spur of the moment.

We arrived there in less than an hour, however we still missed the first race. This visit to Nottingham was the only time in my life I have ever attended the races. What stood out for me was the way the jockeys had to struggle to pull the horses up after they’d passed the winning post. I’d seen hundreds of horse races on television, but wasn’t aware of this equestrian skill as the camera doesn’t continue to follow them. My father used to go racing occasionally in his younger days, but by the time I was growing up (he was thirty eight when I was born, so was a relatively ‘old’ dad), because of his ill health he preferred to watch the action on television, as he did with the footy.

My mate and I missed the first race but I believe we had a punt on all the other contests. There seems little point in going if you don’t. I came away twelve quid to the good, which was exactly the cost of the entrance fee, and as my mate wouldn’t take any money for the petrol he’d used to take us there, I actually broke even. He could afford to decline the fuel offer, as he’d put more money on the horse that had won for me, so came away with a profit of twenty odd quid, which wasn’t to be sniffed at in the eighties.

After this successful trip to the races it seems strange that we were never inspired to go again, but my mate married in 1991 and swiftly slipped ‘under the thumb’, where he has firmly remained ever since. Although he was a good mate at the time, indeed I was his best man, our close friendship only lasted about seven years.

The racing trip came about as a result of our inadvertently meeting up in a betting shop; after this I cannot recall visiting one of those establishments ever again after years of previously frequenting them, initially with my dad and subsequently alone. It would appear that I never gambled during the whole of the 1990’s, or if I did I can’t recall doing so. This was the decade during which my interest in the other kind of punting, as detailed in my excellent opus Not A Neanderthal But Never A Fluffy: Thirty Years Of Paying For Sex, developed.

I had paid for sex a handful of times during the 1980’s, but it was from the dawn of the 90’s that my obsession with it developed, mushrooming massively in the second half of that decade and for the first ten years of the new millennium. All thoughts of gambling on the horses or the football had apparently been banished from my mind, and I sailed past high street betting shops like a majestic schooner on a calm sea; something I continued to do even in the darkest hell of my gambling addiction. This addiction being solely fuelled by the internet.

Online

As I reflect in my paid