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“His gambling routine was blessedly interrupted in March 2020, when professional sports shut down amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But before too long, Korean baseball came back, followed by tennis. Because he was working from home, he could have sports on all the time. It was like an “NCAA Tournament every day, every week.” Not knowing any other bookies, Andrew turned to the two largest offshore, online sportsbooks: Bovada.lv and BetOnline.ag. Both offer a wide array of sports betting options, as well as casino games and poker. BetOnline consistently accepts credit cards, which only sometimes worked on Bovada. For the latter, Andrew would deposit money into cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, purchase Bitcoin, and immediately deposit the Bitcoin into Bovada, where it was converted into cash he could use to gamble. On the offshore sportsbooks, Andrew resumed his normal betting routine. But once he started gambling with credit cards, he began racking up significant debt.”

Quote by Jonathan D. Cohen

Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

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“Once he went into debt, Andrew’s imperative shifted. He kept betting less to try to recover his losses or his ego and more to win money that would allow him to prevent anyone from discovering his gambling problem. Andrew’s doubling down speaks to an important feature of gambling disorder: It represents the only addiction where the affected individual can reasonably hope their addiction will solve the problems that stem from that addiction. Someone dependent on alcohol, for instance, has no reason to hope that their next drink will relieve them of their substance use disorder. A problem gambler, on the other hand, can hold on to the belief that all it takes is one big win to wipe out all of their debt, and therefore all the negative consequences of their gambling. As a result, many keep betting, and keep losing, which only makes them more desperate to bet, and so on. Andrew fell into this exact trap. He would gamble, and the feeling of his life hanging in the balance only made his bets even more thrilling. Eventually, he would win enough to come close to getting out of credit card debt. Rather than stop betting, he would push to try and get enough for all of it. Then he would start to lose again. And the cycle would continue.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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“Problem gambling has a higher suicide rate than any other type of addiction. According to a 2023 Rutgers study of New Jersey bettors, almost 30 percent of individuals with a gambling disorder reported thoughts of suicide, 25 percent had engaged in self-harm, and 20 percent had attempted suicide. An important factor is gender. Men are already much more likely to die by suicide than women, and heavy gamblers, especially sports bettors, are predominantly male. Gambling studies scholarship offers two additional reasons for the high prevalence of suicide among problem gamblers. First is indebtedness, the understanding that the gambler’s debts would disappear with them. The second is shame. Gambling addiction has not been destigmatized nearly as much as other substance addictions.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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“Andrew received an email notification every time he accessed his FanDuel account, and there were some days when he would log in twenty times, the only gap a few hours of sleep between 3:00 and 7:00 a.m. (it is not possible to determine how long he kept the site open each time he logged in). More troublesome was the pace of his deposits. He would rapid-fire money into his account, on one day making twelve deposits totaling nearly $1,000, behavior that suggests he was chasing losses. ... FanDuel never flagged Andrew’s account. Sportsbooks make choices all the time about limiting players. They have a habit, in fact, of cutting off or severely limiting anyone who wins consistently, in some cases doing so under the guise of protecting problem gamblers. But people like Andrew, who was exhibiting clear signs of problematic play but consistently losing, are welcome to keep betting.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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“Isaac Rose-Berman explains, many professional bettors purposefully engage in betting behaviors that make them look irresponsible, such as logging in at odd hours or withdrawing money and then canceling the withdrawal to keep money in their account (to give the appearance that they can’t resist betting). These sharp players know that sportsbooks don’t want to cut off bettors like Andrew. They reason that the longer they can make the sportsbooks think they have an addiction, the longer they will be allowed to bet without limits on their account.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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“Fundamentally, sportsbooks want to limit their own liability, not people’s gambling. They also reason that any restrictions will not actually stop the problem but will simply send bettors into the waiting, willing arms of a rival. If someone is going to gamble more than they can afford, it might as well be on their app.”

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Author:Jonathan D. Cohen
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“Claiming bogus medical reimbursements, he transferred the entirety of his HSA into his bank account to fund his gambling. His mother gave him $8,000 in May to purchase an engagement ring, and over the course of the next three days he transferred almost half of her check into FanDuel.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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“Andrew missed two mortgage payments and the bank called his father, whose name remained on the title. His parents confronted him and, seven years after he placed his first bet, he confessed that he had a gambling problem. It came as a complete surprise. His mother said it felt “like we were hit by a truck.” For his father, the confession immediately explained so much of Andrew’s behavior the previous few years: his shabby clothes and beat-up car that seemed out of place for a young attorney, his isolation, his use of the family credit card for innocuous purchases, his moodiness, his encyclopedic knowl- edge of seemingly every sport, his addiction to his phone, and so on.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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