Mayo: Scenes from a Gamblers Anonymous meeting: tears, hugs and hope and recovery

Saturday, 16. April 2016

Mayo: Scenes from a Gamblers Anonymous meeting: tears, hugs and hope and recovery

Michael Mayo

Michael MayoSun Sentinel Columnist4/13/16
The 266th meeting of the Boynton Beach chapter of Gamblers Anonymous began, as usual, with readings from “the book,” a pamphlet that members clutched as they sat in a circle at the Mandel Jewish Community Center.

“We admitted we were powerless over gambling — that our lives had become unmanageable,” one attendee, a blackjack and poker junkie in his 20s, recited.

Then they spoke from their hearts.

They told of empty refrigerators and bank accounts, neglected spouses and children, bankrupted businesses and foreclosed homes.  There was a former hotshot poker player who would compete in big televised tournaments in Las Vegas, but realized something was wrong when his 10-year-old son could calculate the odds of his hand winning.

There was a former record producer who once ran away from trouble in New Jersey, only to find worse trouble in Puerto Rico.

There was a woman in her 60s, a newcomer in the midst of a 30-day stay at a nearby treatment center for alcohol and drugs, who spoke of blowing through her life savings at slot machines. “I was supposed to retire tomorrow,” she said through tears. “Now I’ll have to work the rest of my life.”

On and on it went Tuesday, around the room with 45 men and five women. Some hadn’t made a bet since the 1960s; others gambled last week. One first-timer, a divorced dad raising two kids, said he’d waste his paycheck on $25 scratch-off lottery tickets.

“I can’t stand losing,” he said. “So I’d play until I won.”

Sitting up front, Arnie W nodded in recognition  of Lake Worth, a compulsive gambler turned gambling counselor, invited me to attend the meeting to mark his 48th anniversary since making a bet.

At GA, they call this “a birthday,” since the day represents a spiritual rebirth. Longtime friends and gambling addicts, many of whom he helped through the years, gave him big hugs and birthday cards before the meeting.

He never played blackjack, slot machines or poker at the Seminole tribal or pari-mutuel casinos that have sprouted across South Florida in the past decade. He has never played fantasy football or baseball at popular websites such as DraftKings or FanDuel, which he sees as the next big problem in his line of work.

Arnies last bet: April 10, 1968.

At age 30, after a life of stealing and lying, he finally had enough.

In his recovery, he found a calling.

And the calling keeps calling, literally. He and wife Sheila run a gambling helpline, 1-888-LAST-BET,( aswexler.com) which guides addicts to help .As gambling has mutated in today’s high-tech world, temptation for addicts is everywhere, Arnie said. These days everyone can bet on practically anything from their smart phones, and most South Floridians live within a 30-minute drive of a casino. Wireless banking, ATMs and credit card advances provide easy fuel for problem gamblers. Lottery tickets, including those $25 scratch-offs, are sold at nearly every gas station, supermarket and corner store.

The Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling, a separate entity which gets state money to run the 1-888-ADMIT-IT helpline, has seen its volume nearly double in the last decade, from 3,000 in 2005 to 5,400 last year. Most calls, 58 percent, came from South Florida.

When arnie moved here from New Jersey in the 1990s, he said there was only one weekly GA meeting in the region. Now there are dozens, from Miami to Port St. Lucie, with meetings every night. (For a full list, go to www.gamblersanonymous.org).

Yet arnie  said society lags when it comes to treating compulsive gambling, which he said affects 5 million Americans.

“Insurance does not cover gambling addiction unless a person also has an addiction to drinking or drugs,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

Casinos and racetracks have “self-exclusion” programs for gamblers who want to ban themselves, and gambling venues kick in a small portion of their revenues toward the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling. But arnie  said there’s still a long way to go with research and help.

“It’s a hidden disease,” He  said. “It doesn’t leave needle marks — you can’t smell a losing bet on someone’s breath.”

The Boytnon Beach GA members have each other, and for some, it’s enough. Many attendees wore rubber bracelets that read, “One day at a time.” They stood and joined hands to close the meeting with a prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

 

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Copyright © 2016, Sun Sentinel

READ MORE SEE THE BOOK   AMAZON  ”ALL BETS ARE OFF’     BY STEVE JACOBSON

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Bob Salter’s 4/3/16 Program WFAN RADIO NY

Tuesday, 5. April 2016

Bob Salter’s 4/3/16 Program   WFAN RADIO NY

01:21:39  PlayDownload
Certified compulsive gambling counselor Arnie Wexler, a recovering compulsive gambler, and co-author Steve Jacobson discussed the depth of the compulsive gambler, the impact of fantasy sports, internet betting, and other forms of gambling, and resources available for the compulsive gambler and family members.
Malzberg | Arnie & Shelia Wexler discuss Arnie’s new book, “All Bets Are Off:” – YouTube
We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.  

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Rats that tend to gamble help reveal science of risk

Friday, 25. March 2016

Rats that tend to gamble help reveal science of risk

By Pam Belluck, New York Times News Service

Thursday, March 24, 2016 | 2 a.m.

When people make risky decisions, like doubling down in blackjack or investing in volatile stocks, what happens in the brain?

Scientists have long tried to understand what makes some people risk-averse and others risk-taking. Answers could have implications for how to treat, curb or prevent destructively risky behavior, like pathological gambling or drug addiction.

Now, a study by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a prominent Stanford neuroscientist and psychiatrist, and his colleagues gives some clues. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that a specific type of neuron or nerve cell, in a certain brain region helps galvanize whether or not a risky choice is made.

The study was conducted in rats, but experts said it built on research suggesting the findings could be similar in humans. If so, they said, it could inform approaches to addiction, which involves some of the same neurons and brain areas, as well as treatments for Parkinson’s disease because one class of Parkinson’s medications turns some patients into problem gamblers.

In a series of experiments led by Kelly Zalocusky, a doctoral student, researchers found that a risk-averse rat made decisions based on whether its previous choice involved a loss (in this case, of food). Rats whose previous decision netted them less food were prompted to behave conservatively next time by signals from certain receptors in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, the scientists discovered. These receptors, which are proteins attached to neurons, are part of the dopamine system, a neurochemical important to emotion, movement and thinking.

In risk-taking rats, however, those receptors sent a much fainter signal, so the rats kept making high-stakes choices even if they lost out. But by employing optogenetics, a technique that uses light to manipulate neurons, the scientists stimulated brain cells with those receptors, heightening the “loss” signal and turning risky rats into safer rats.

“We know from other work that this is all relevant to human addiction and gambling,” said Trevor Robbins, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the new research. “This study has zeroed in on the area precisely where this occurs. They’ve tried to show that not having this signal biases you toward risky judgments in the future, and they’ve done a lovely job on that.”

Step by step, the researchers built evidence that neurons with a dopamine receptor called D2 in the nucleus accumbens, a region integral to brain reward circuitry, play a critical role in risky-or-not decision-making. Strikingly, they found they could alter the message those neurons send.

Rats were given a choice of two food levers. One released a consistent amount of sucrose each time; the other often delivered a tiny amount, but in 25 percent of presses, it unleashed a delicious sucrose flood. Over time, both levers gave the same quantity, so rats did not go hungry and their choices came down to whether or not they were gamblers.

Risky rats gambled on the iffier lever more than half the time. Risk-averse rats were strongly influenced by their last choice; if they picked the risky lever and received a trickle, they picked the consistent lever next time.

“Some are very sensitive to losing, and if they take a risky option and lose, they’re very likely to not go back to it again,” said Paul Phillips, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Washington and a co-author of a commentary about the study. “That’s very common in human behavior. An analogy is a slot machine in Vegas.”

To identify the brain location involved in these decisions, the researchers gave rats a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, pramipexole, marketed as Mirapex, which acts on D2 receptors and seems to dampen some patients’ ability to restrain risk-seeking behavior. Risk-averse rats receiving pramipexole turned into risk-taking rats, but the drug had much greater effects when piped directly into the nucleus accumbens than when it was administered to another brain area researchers had thought might be involved.

The scientists used a technique Deisseroth helped invent called fiber photometry, which uses light particles to track activity of neurons tagged with certain proteins. They found that neurons in the nucleus accumbens with D2 receptors transmitted a signal when rats were making their decisions. That signal was much larger if the choice the rat had just made had been a loser, yielding just a dribble of sucrose. The signal only spiked in non-risky rats, however; it was negligible in rats that always gambled for the sucrose windfall.

So, what to do with those risky rats? Using optogenetics, which Deisseroth also helped develop, the team stimulated nucleus accumbens neurons with D2 receptors at the very moment of the fateful food-lever decision. That caused the receptors to send strong loss signals to the rats, apparently making them weigh recent losses more heavily, and prompting them to play it safe with their next lever choice.

“It turns out you can explain a large part of whether rats were risky or not by this particular signal at this particular time,” Deisseroth said. “We saw it happen, and then we were able to provide that signal, and then see that we could drive the behavior causally.”

Human brains are more complex, of course, and “are not only affected by immediate recent losses,” Deisseroth said, but “your appetite for risk in many circumstances might be at least possibly reducible to what a particular set of cells in a particular brain area is doing.”

Robbins said that might yield insights for drug addiction, since it “clearly involves the dopamine system and these areas of the brain,” and in addicts, as in risky rats, the same receptors produce weaker signals.

For Parkinson’s patients, if versions of drugs like pramipexole could be developed to skip the nucleus accumbens and focus on brain areas responsible for movement, “it would be a much more effective therapy,” Phillips said. “It’s because it gets to the nucleus accumbens that it has this gambling effect.”

He added, “Now, not only do we know the part of the brain, but we know the particular cells in the brain, and we know that if you manipulate them you can change the behavior.”

Deisseroth said optogenetic manipulation is too invasive to be done in humans, but findings from optogenetic studies in animals are now being used to identify brain areas to target with noninvasive brain stimulation for problems like cocaine addiction.

Finding the roots of risk in the brain also “helps us understand what might be making people different in terms of their risk appetites,” he said. “It may help us see them differently, maybe in a more tolerant way, to realize that there’s a real biological basis for their behavior.”
Malzberg | Arnie & Shelia Wexler discuss Arnie’s new book, “All Bets Are Off:” – YouTube


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We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.  
OUR NEW BOOK  GAMBLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO RECOVER FROM IT
   ” ALL BETS ARE OFF”

  BY ARNIE AND SHEILA WEXLER AND STEVE JACOBSON 

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Tropicana website called gamblers ‘degenerates’

Tuesday, 22. March 2016

APP 3/22/16,,Tropicana website called gamblers ‘degenerates’

Problem gamblers should not be called degenerates.

On Tuesday, Press on Your Side happened to click on a sponsored Facebook advertisement for Tropicana Atlantic City and was brought to a website touting the online Super Monopoly Money game. We scrolled to the bottom of the page.

Instead of words advising people with a gambling addiction to call 1-800-GAMBLER it stated this: “Bet with your head, not over it. If you or someone you know is a degenerate gambler and wants help, call: 1-800-Gambler.”

Press on Your Side alerted Tropicana Atlantic City of the language. The casino said the page would be removed “immediately by the party that hosts it.” The wording was changed shortly afterward.

“Tropicana would like to thank you for bringing this unauthorized problem gambler hotline information language to our attention on one of our Internet gaming landing pages,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Press on Your Side.  ”This is clearly not the approved language that Tropicana uses and has instructed all of our partners and suppliers to use.”

We have noticed that other pages have appropriate language. “Bet with your head, not over it. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER,” is on another page. (It’s also what the offending page says now.) ”Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER,” is at the bottom of the main page at tropicana.net.

“Tropicana takes its responsibilities very seriously with regards to responsible gaming and ensuring that support is available for any individual who feels that they may have a gambling problem,” the spokesperson said.

We called Neva Pryor, the executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, and told her about it. She was not happy.

“Problem and disordered gamblers are not considered degenerate,” Pryor said.

Problem gambling is a disorder on par with substance abuse, Pryor said. “The page is to be taken down immediately,” she said.

“I applaud you for letting me know about it,” Pryor said. “We can’t have this. It’s bad enough that my people … are feeling shame and degradation from the disorder, and you are going to have someone put degenerate? No.”

MORE: Atlantic City selling airport for pennies on the dollar

Bradley Beach resident Arnie Wexler, a certified complusive gambling counselor, spoke with Tropicana officials after being contacted by Press on Your Side. “They are very responsible people,” he said. “I am surprised this happened, but they are going to correct it.”

Wexler said he has trained the casino industry about problem gambling. “It is so hidden and invisible,” said Wexler, author of “All Bets Are Off.”

“There is no smell. There are no dilated pupils. There are no tell-tale signs,” he said.

Do you have a consumer problem that needs solving? Contact David P. Willis at 732-643-4042, [email protected] or facebook.com/dpwillis732.

We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.  
GET OUR NEW BOOK  GAMBLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO RECOVER FROM IT
   ” ALL BETS ARE OFF”

BY ARNIE AND SHEILA WEXLER AND STEVE JACOBSON

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HOW many have started there gambling addiction with MARCH MADNESS

Monday, 14. March 2016

 HOW many  have started there gambling addiction with MARCH MADNESS
Who knows how many college students are going to bet on these games ? And how many who will place the 1st bet they ever make on one of the games and might become an addicted gambler ! How many athletes will place a bet on a game also. Maybe even some that are playing in the games.!

Arnie  Wexler over the years  has spoken to many athletes who had a gambling addiction college and pro.When you open your local newspaper to the sports pages all over the country you do see lines and point spreads on sporting events.The N C A A should have enough clout to stop something like this on
N C A A games—– if they wanted to !! . But why would they want to.

Arnie Wexler said “It is easier to gamble than it is to buy cigarettes or a can of beer on college campuses all over the country.”
The National Gambling Study Commission said that there are “5 million compulsive gamblers and 15 million at risk in the U.S” Forty eight percent of the people who gamble bet on sports.
SEE  Wexlers new book with Steve Jacobson

“All Bets Are Off “

 Losers, Liars, and Recovery from gambling addiction

This is the 1st book even written where the spouse of a gambler  shares her story.
“I have known Arnie Wexler for over twenty years. He is a kind and giving man whose story touches a nerve for anyone with an addictive personality. We all know someone who has reached his or her limit; Arnie fought his way back and lived to tell about what it takes to recover and reclaim your life.”—Ian EagleCBS Sports/YES Network/Westwood One Radio
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“Steve Jacobson who wrote the book  is what’s known in baseball and journalism as a seasoned pro, a man of credibility, conscience, and caring. Arnie Wexler There’s a reason why, for the last thirty-five years, he has been the news media’s go-to guy on issues of addicted gambling: He has saved at least as many souls, including his own, as Mother Teresa.”—Phil MushnickSports Columnist, NY Post
Get the real scoop: Talk to Arnie Wexler who is one of the nation’s leading experts on the subject of compulsive gambling and a recovering compulsive gambler himself, who placed his last bet on April 10, 1968. He has been involved in helping compulsive gamblers for the last 43 years. Through the years, Wexler has spoken to more compulsive gamblers than anyone else in America. Arnie has spoken to students who gamble in college, day and night. They even gamble during class, and it goes on in high school even in the lunch rooms. According to a Harvard study a few years ago, 4.67 percent of young people have a gambling problem. Experts tell us that the earlier a person starts to gamble, the greater the risk of them becoming a compulsive gambler. In another survey, 96 percent of adult male recovering gamblers stated that they started gambling before the age of 14 .Some years ago, Arnie was on a TV show with Howard Cossell (ABC Sports Beat). The topic was: Does the media encourage the public to gamble? Bobby Knight, Indiana University basketball coach at the time, said: “A newspaper which published point spreads should also publish names and addresses of services that render to prostitutes. They practically have the same legality in every one of our states, and I can’t see why one is any better than the other” On the same show, former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn said: “Anything that encourages gambling on team sports bothers me. We all look hypocritical. But then why are we putting up the odds unless we are trying to encourage it?” David Stern, NBA commissioner said: “We don’t want the week’s grocery money to be bet on the outcome of a particular sporting event”Arnie is available to speak with you on this subject.Arnie & Sheila Wexler Associatesaswexler.comBoynton Beach FLOffice #: 561 2490922

Cell#: 954-501-5270

Need Help For A Gambling Problem?

Wexler runs a national help line for gamblers seeking help:

Call: 1-888 LAST BET

Arnie & Sheila Wexler Associates

             aswexler.com

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Ex-JPMorgan Broker Gets Five Years for Gambling Funds Away

Sunday, 13. March 2016

Ex-JPMorgan Broker Gets Five Years for Gambling Funds Away

BY  BLUMBERG
  • Oppenheim once had 500 clients, managed almost $90 million
  • Broker racked up losses betting on NFL games, online sports

A former JPMorgan Chase & Co. broker who said he stole millions of dollars from customers because his brain was “hijacked” by an addiction to sports gambling was sentenced to five years in prison.

Michael Oppenheim, who at one point had about 500 clients and almost $90 million under management at JPMorgan, got so deeply in debt that, according to his lawyer, even his bookie expressed sympathy for him.

The former broker also got a break from U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, who said at a hearing in Manhattan Tuesday that his battle with gambling addiction and his care for his disabled daughter were why she gave him less than the 10 years prosecutors sought. She also noted that Oppenheim’s gambling intensified just months after the daughter was born.

“I am cognizant that gambling is a mental disorder which is aggravated during periods of stress and depression,” said Torres, who also credited Oppenheim for expressing remorse for his crimes.

Oppenheim wagered on weekly National Football League games starting in 1993 and eventually moved to online sports betting, his lawyer, Paul Shechtman, told Torres during the hearing. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars while working at JPMorgan, Oppenheim began stealing from clients to attempt to make up his losses, he said. Oppenheim eventually began options trading in technology stocks like Apple Inc., losing as much as $2.7 million in one day in a fruitless effort to pay back clients, Shechtman said

Pleaded Guilty

Oppenheim pleaded guilty in November to stealing more than $20 million, having targeted 10 of the wealthiest clients on his list. He covered up the theft by giving the customers faked account statements in what the U.S. called a game of “hide and seek” with their money.

“I recognize that what I did was horrible,” Oppenheim told the judge just before he was sentenced. “I always thought I was one or two trades away from fixing everything. For me, one bet is one too many. If I were not in the grips of this addiction, I would not have stolen any money.”

According to prosecutors, the former broker induced clients to withdraw hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars from their accounts by promising he’d invest the money in low-risk municipal bonds to be held at the bank. Instead, the U.S. said, he used the money to obtain cashier’s checks and deposited them in his own accounts outside the bank. Oppenheim’s scam lasted more than seven years and targeted clients he knew wouldn’t pay close attention to their accounts, prosecutors said.

“We worked closely with authorities throughout this process and are glad that
the criminal case has been resolved,” said Michael Fusco, a spokesman for JPMorgan. “We’ve been working with all affected customers to ensure that any stolen funds have been returned. Again, we’re sorry and angry this happened – for the victims of this crime, and for the thousands of other Chase employees who show up to work every day and do the right thing for our customers.”

The case is U.S. v. Oppenheim, 15-cr-00548, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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SEE OUR BOOK

  

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The Secret World of Gamblers Betting Millions on the 2016 Election

Saturday, 12. March 2016

THE BIG SHORT

03.05.16 12:13 AM ET  THE DAILY BEAST  BY  BEN COLLINS

The Secret World of Gamblers Betting Millions on the 2016 Election

The number crunchers have arrived to the political scene and are about to make a bunch of cash on our long national nightmare.

“This is, by far, the most interesting work I’ve done in years,” says John Aristotle Phillips, who once had the FBI come and take his blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

Phillips is now the CEO of PredictIt, a website where people are doing a pretty tremendous job of shielding themselves from the realities of this apocalyptic election by betting on it. When the world ends, some of them will die with a few thousand more American dollars literally burning holes in their pockets.

Some of the most dedicated of those PredictIt traders are all in this bar, The Grayson, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Super Tuesday, many of them trying not to spill their free Coors or Bud Lights on their MacBook Pros as results pour in.

They are traders, by the way, and not degenerate gamblers. At least not by definition. PredictIt is a prediction market with a hard cap, and not one of those DraftKings-style sites where robots steal money from poor people who watch a lot of SportsCenter. It’s technically operated out of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, but who are they kidding: Their offices are in Washington, D.C.

PredictIt’s PR people probably do not want us to write that these people are here to make a bunch of cash on the outcome of this election, but these people are here to make a bunch of cash on the outcome of this election.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver swears by these things. In 2012, right before President Obama was reelected and Silver correctly predicted the outcome of every single state, he wrote, “I am far from an efficient-market hypothesis purist, but markets are tough to beat in most circumstances.” Back in 2012, it was a website called InTrade, which has since been shut down. InTrade nailed the right winner of all but one state in Barack Obama’s reelection.

Now, in the U.K., it’s BetFair, which is a straight-up gambling site that prohibits U.S. users from hopping in. PredictIt allows users—and, yes, Americans—to bet on the futures of a candidate on a dollar scale under the guise of research.

Here’s how it works: Think Donald Trump is going to win the whole thing? He’s at 29 cents at press time. Put 29 cents down today and you can win 71 more cents over the course of the election.

The potential problem comes when something like this becomes too popular. What if Nate Silver, knowing these things are often as pinpoint-accurate as he is, starts flouting them as a healthy barometer for who’s actually going to win this thing? Then what if Donald Trump, who has built his entire campaign on the phrase “Check out these polls” (at least until he made the race exclusively about his penis this week), uses those same stories to prove that he is, in fact, going to win this thing?

Does this not create a perfect feedback loop and/or Human Centipede by which gutless, angry pumpkin man Donald Trump cannot be stopped?

It got a little hairy when I brought up how this might, you know, actually affect theelection with Phillips.

Phillips really did submit a plan for an A-bomb, by the way, as a term paper when he was a junior at Princeton in the ’70s. (He was also the school’s mascot.) Since then, he’s been working on the stuff that has redefined how candidates campaign. He and his brother created one of the first computerized voting lists in the ’80s, for example, and his companies have worked with every White House since Ronald Reagan’s.

He and the site’s spokesperson, Brandi Travis, both insist that the site isn’t really in it for the gamblin’ world domination stuff. They both stressed the community of the site. The comments section of each market contains pretty much no racial slurs, which is, in fact, a Nobel Peace Prize-worthy feat for an election website, and probably a sentiment that should be engraved on the tombstone of capitalism.

Also, each user can only lay $850 on each “market.” There are ways around this. You can bet on Trump for the nomination and against him in every state, for example. Those are all markets. But it would be hard to bet millions in an effort to mess with outcomes. You’d get caught.

That’s why the Commodity Futures Trading Commission served that university in New Zealand a no-action letter in October 2014, effectively allowing the place to form PredictIt as a nonprofit.

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But here’s what has Phillips thinking this is better than the A-bomb: People turn out to these events. They drink the Coors Lights. They trade in public. And they don’t want to murder each other when they disagree about who should be the next president.

Seems impossible, but it’s true: People supporting all different kinds of candidates have had their vitriol neutered by the color of money. And it’s not just your standard Manhattanite. The Grayson featured a diverse group—Republican, Democrat, white, black, Hispanic. They were, of course, almost all young dudes, and they had collectively bought out the world’s supply of Ralph Lauren polo shirts, but they were not of all one stripe. It was kind of beautiful, really.

This capitalism tombstone inscription is getting awfully long, but I’m sure it can afford it.

“There’s real promise in this community,” says Phillips. They’re up to 17,000 active traders every month.

Here’s that promise personified in the corner of the bar: Ryann Williams. He’s headed to the University of Virginia in a few months to get his MBA. He’s on his MacBook in the corner of the bar telling me about the difference between limit orders and market orders. (The value is in limit orders, he says.)

Williams is looking at an absolutely indecipherable graph that must be very important and he’s telling me about how appalled he is by the concept of Donald Trump. Also, simultaneously, he is betting a bunch of money on Donald Trump.

“If he’s making you money, you can hedge against your heart,” he says.

Probably not a good one for the capitalism tombstone, but awfully telling.

“Donald Trump has won a lot of people a lot of money,” says Williams, and he includes himself in that group.

Williams has $5,000 spread out across a few different markets. One of them? Donald Trump, a mortal political enemy, winning the GOP nomination.

Had he kept the bet, he would’ve lost a little money between Tuesday and press day. Trump went all the way up to 84 cents on Super Tuesday, as the media narrative made it appear he had the whole thing locked up. Now, it looks like the RNC is trying to pull some funny business by tag-teaming this race into a brokered convention.

Mitt Romney, who could previously be had for a penny on the PredictIt market, is now up to 4 cents. Trump hit a low of 62 cents by Friday.

“I do not agree with him at all,” says Williams. “But the value is there.”

Don’t worry, he’s effectively shorting Trump after all. He doesn’t have him to win the whole thing, and he can sell him at anytime. He used to do this to Marco Rubio, for example. Buy him, because his stock tended to soar directly after debates, then sell afterwards when his stock was higher.

For robot reasons that have nothing to do with PredictIt’s computers, that backfired hard.

“That, uh, cost me some money,” he says.

Still, the victory will feel even more triumphant if Trump can be shorted one last time—one big, financial penis joke to end them all, The Biggest Short.

And that indecipherable graph in front of Williams might be showing Trump’s value or might be showing something else entirely—who knows? it looks like the world’s worst Jackson Pollock painting. But it was created by Jim Schmitz, and he’s here, too, on the other side of the table. It’s part of a Rube Goldberg machine he created in 2008—“a fully automated computer program that could make real money on its own by trading securities in a small market called the Iowa Electronic Markets.”

“If I’d figured it out 10 years earlier, I’d be a millionaire,” says Schmitz. “But I didn’t, and now I’m unemployed.”

Schmitz is here on a lark trying to figure out if he should switch from the Iowa markets. There’s not a lot of action there, and action is required in a place where someone has to be available to buy the shares you don’t want.

He thinks he’s about to come over and try it out. It’s not enough to make a living on, but he says it’s probably still worth it.

“It is. It’s for the love of the game,” he says.

This might be the only way to love this election, anyway: go full vice. Embrace the hell. A tiny-handed man who ran a failed Atlantic City casino might have suckered America’s profoundly stupid into letting him run the country, but you can still beat him at his own sketchy, barely legal game along the way.

GAMBLING PROBLEM READ OUR BOOK      

  
ALL BETS ARE OFF          ABOUT GAMBLING ADDICTION AND RECOVERY
ASWEXLER.COM       954 5015270

We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.


OUR NEW BOOK  GAMBLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO RECOVER FROM IT
   ” ALL BETS ARE OFF”BY ARNIE AND SHEILA WEXLER AND STEVE JACOBSON

 


Arnie and Sheila Wexler currently work with Sunspire Health www.sunspirehealth.com, a national network of addiction recovery providers. They work closely with facilities Sunspire Health Recovery Road in Palm Beach Gardens, FL and Sunspire Health Spring Hill in Ashby, MA where gambling disorder, substance abuse and co-occurring mental health recovery programs are offered.We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.


GET OUR NEW BOOK  GAMBLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO RECOVER FROM IT
   ” ALL BETS ARE OFF”BY ARNIE AND SHEILA WEXLER AND STEVE JACOBSON

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Gambling? Bring the kids!

Saturday, 12. March 2016

Gambling? Bring the kids!
BYDavid RatermanCorrespondent
In Florida, people under 21 aren’t allowed in casinos, but parents who want to play slots or table games and bring their kids along have options.Hotel guests at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino (1 Seminole Way, Hollywood, 800-937-0010, SeminoleHardRockHollywood.com) can hire a babysitter from the concierge. The cost is $15 an hour and $1 per hour for each additional kid, with a four-hour minimum. The babysitter stays in the guests’ room.Gulfstream Park Racing and Casino (901 S. Federal Highway, Hallandale Beach, 954-454-7000, GulfstreamPark.com) has a babysitting service for day visitors. Parents can drop off their kids at Cool Corner family bistro and then visit the casino, horse track, or the shops and restaurants in the Village at Gulfstream Park.

The babysitting service costs $35 per child for three hours and includes food and games. Kids must be between 3 and 8 years old, and reservations are required five hours in advance.

If parents stay with their kids, they can do plenty of activities together.

From 7 to 10 a.m. Saturday, March 12, as part of the weekly Breakfast at Gulfstream, kids can meet Bugs Bunny while enjoying a $10 per person all-you-can-eat buffet. Kids under 3 eat free. The entire family can watch thoroughbreds training on the track. Afterward, a free tram will take visitors to the barn area, where they can see horses and meet a pony.

At 10 a.m. on select Saturdays, a free junior cooking class is offered at Williams-Sonoma. And from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturdays, free cartoon-drawing classes are available at Barker Animation Art Gallery, with all supplies provided.

Every week, Gulfstream’s open plaza hosts Family Fun Friday, which includes a DJ, face-painting, caricaturists, games and appearances by special characters.

At Strike 10 Bowling and Sports Lounge, two of the lanes were designed for kids. They’re narrower and shorter than regular lanes and have bumpers that can be put up. The balls are lighter.

“Gulfstream is an entertainment destination for young and old, male and female, every nationality,” marketing manager Corin Angel says. “It’s a clean, safe environment that’s great for kids, especially with horseracing. Kids are drawn to animals.”

Parents can take their kids to the horse track to watch races. But they can’t wager until they turn 18.

Calder Casino (21001 N.W. 27th Ave., Miami Gardens, 305-625-1311, CalderCasino.com) presents its 40-day thoroughbred-racing season in the fall. Some kids love standing close to the track and watching the horses sprint by, spokesman Matt Harper says.

Other family-friendly activities at local casinos and pari-mutuels include the Wheelin Dealin Food Truck Festival, a food-truck roundup that takes place 5-10 p.m. on the first Saturday of the month at the Casino at Dania Beach (301 E. Dania Beach Blvd., Dania Beach, 954-920-1511, DaniaCasino.com), and on the third Saturday of the month atMagic City Casino (450 N.W. 37th Ave., Miami, 305-460-6579, MagicCityCasino.com). The festival often includes a free concert.

On big racing days at Palm Beach Kennel Club (1111 N. Congress Ave., West Palm Beach, 561-683-2222, PBKennelClub.com), such as the $50,000 Arthur J. Rooney Sr. St. Patrick’s Invitational on Saturday, March 12,l, kids have a lot to do. Besides watching greyhounds race, they can pet the dogs and learn about adopting them, enjoy balloon art and listen to live music.

SEE OUR BOOK ON AMAZON
“ALL BETS ARE OFF “         ABOUT GAMBLING ADDICTION AND RECOVERY



Arnie and Sheila Wexler currently work with Sunspire Health www.sunspirehealth.com, a national network of addiction recovery providers. They work closely with facilities Sunspire Health Recovery Road in Palm Beach Gardens, FL and Sunspire Health Spring Hill in Ashby, MA where gambling disorder, substance abuse and co-occurring mental health recovery programs are offered.We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.
GET OUR NEW BOOK  GAMBLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO RECOVER FROM IT
   ” ALL BETS ARE OFF”BY ARNIE AND SHEILA WEXLER AND STEVE JACOBSON

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I AM ON THE EXCLUSION LIST ???

Saturday, 12. March 2016

I AM ON THE EXCLUSION LIST ???
YOU CAN SEE HOW ADDICTED A GAMBLER CAN BECOME  (EVEN TO PLAY KNOWING IF U WIN U CANT GET THE $)

Well unfortunately Arnie i snuck into my local casino. i began playing slots and unfortunately i hit a jackpot which drew the attention of the attendant. i was going to just leave but didnt have time. so he asked me my name and id and of course i did not give him my correct name. he left and game back w gaming commission people who said they couldnt locate my fake name in the computer. they then began asking me several questions. a short time later they left and instructed me to bring back my Id. i continued to play cuz i was too frightened to leave and after about 45 min they approached me…called out my name and compared my face to their pic. i then had to forfeit the 1248 plus the 550 i had in the machine and a female officer took me to the basement. she went over my information.  but at NO time did i show them my id nor did i sign any paperwork? Could i possibly deny it was me??? she then walked me to my car and i left.

i am extremely scared cuz judge said hes put me in jail next time? please help me!!!

should i try to resind my self exclusion if i even can just in case i mess up again? right now i dont ever want to go there but as hapoened this time during deep depression of losing my home and soon to be homeless i became dispondent and frankly lost my will to live so i went to escape my reality.

omg please help me…write a letter…know of an atty who can just speak for me??? i am currently interviewing for jobs and if this charge goes thru ill never get a job i am afraid. PLEASE I am begging for any kind of help.

Thank you,

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ADDICTION PROFESSIONAL MAG JULY 15 ARNIE AND SHEILA

Saturday, 12. March 2016

Couple tirelessly pursues help for gamblers

June 17, 2015 by Gary A. Enos, Editor

ADDICTION PROFESSIONAL MAG JULY 15

http://www.addictionpro.com/sites/addictionpro.com/files/imagecache/570x360/10962939_s_0.jpg
Arnie and Sheila Wexler have worked as a team for more than two decades to help people overcome the pain and family destruction wrought by gambling addiction. They have seen numerous changes across the landscape, from society’s somewhat begrudging acceptance of problem gambling as a disease to an increasing prevalence of women directly affected by gambling addiction’s devastation. Their commitment to giving back has never wavered.“The only people who stay in recovery are those who reach their hand out and help other people,” says Arnie Wexler, a recovering compulsive gambler (last bet: April 10, 1968) whose numerous roles in recovery have included executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey and senior vice president of the National Council on Problem Gambling.Wexler in 2014 joined with former New York sportswriter Steve Jacobson to release All Bets Are Off: Losers, Liars, and Recovery From Gambling Addiction (Central Recovery Press), which chronicles Wexler’s addiction and recovery but perhaps more importantly offers a window into how his journey affected his wife, who for years now has counseled gamblers (among her efforts, she introduced a program for compulsive gamblers at the New Hope Foundation inpatient treatment facility in Marlboro, N.J.). The passages drawn from Jacobson’s interviews with Sheila Wexler offer one of the most detailed looks to date at gambling’s effect on a loved one.“I couldn’t read too much of that at one time,” Arnie Wexler says in reference to the book sections labeled “Sheila’s experience.” He explains, “It blew me away. Sometimes it felt like I had been through a session.”

Early exposure

As described in the book, Arnie Wexler got his initial rush from playing pinball machines, then while still in his teens graduated to trading stocks. He and Sheila went to the movies on their first date (he was 21 and she was 16), and then to the racetrack every other time after that.

Arnie promised Sheila he would quit gambling once they were married. But on their honeymoon they got into a fight when he realized that a longshot horse on whom he didn’t bet because of his promise won the Belmont Stakes, yielding a hefty payout. Arnie’s gambling would continue for seven trying years in which he went into paralyzing debt and ceded the roles of husband and father.

“The obvious question is, Why didn’t I walk out?” Sheila Wexler states in the book. “Well, in the ’60s, not many women felt they could walk out of marriages. What could I do? My husband didn’t beat me but I was a beaten-down woman. … I didn’t even consider leaving him because I felt totally dependent on him. The saddest thing is I had resigned myself to this way of life.”

Arnie stopped gambling shortly after he attended his first 12-Step meeting on the advice of a boss; he agreed to do so only because he mistakenly thought the boss had told him that the 12-Step group would help him erase his gambling debts. He and Sheila eventually would counsel other gamblers, first in separate efforts and later as partners who also trained thousands of casino workers and addiction counselors along the way. They are now working with the Palm Beach County, Fla., treatment facility Recovery Road, which has developed a niche in treating gambling addiction. Arnie says he also answers five to 10 calls a day on a toll-free gambling helpline (1-888-LASTBET).

“We don’t share our story [with clients] right off the bat,” Arnie says. “A great key is getting someone to trust you.”

He continues to see numerous examples of the extreme behaviors individuals will engage in to support their addiction. He matter-of-factly describes one woman from Europe who had such an urge to gamble that she would chain herself to the radiator in her home and throw her keys into the street, where a neighbor would pick them up in the morning and set her free.

Demographic changes

The profile of the gambling addict has changed considerably over the past two decades, say the Wexlers. Back then only about one in five of the individuals they were helping were women. That percentage has continued to grow as more “escape gamblers” attracted to slot machines have experienced problems.

Many programs that treat alcohol use disorders fail to detect a co-occurring issue with gambling, and that’s the behavior an individual will turn back to upon leaving treatment. It’s difficult these days to identify an individual who is not affected by some cross-addiction, the Wexlers say.

The Foundation for Recovery last spring honored the couple, whom Central Recovery Press refers to in its book materials as “the foremost leaders addressing the devastation of gambling addiction today,” with its Robert Rehmar Addiction Professional Award. The award is presented to professionals “who have helped raise public awareness of the need for treatment and prevention, or who have made breakthroughs in the treatment/prevention of addiction and support for recovery,” the foundation states.

Also On Addiction Professional…

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Arnie and Sheila Wexler currently work with Sunspire Health www.sunspirehealth.com, a national network of addiction recovery providers. They work closely with facilities Sunspire Health Recovery Road in Palm Beach Gardens, FL and Sunspire Health Spring Hill in Ashby, MA where gambling disorder, substance abuse and co-occurring mental health recovery programs are offered.We need to not let our addiction define us, but have our recovery define us.
GET OUR NEW BOOK  GAMBLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO RECOVER FROM IT
   ” ALL BETS ARE OFF”BY ARNIE AND SHEILA WEXLER AND STEVE JACOBSON

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