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Question

Is sports betting actually addictive or am i just being dramatic

ok so i started doing small parlays during football season last year, like $5-10 for fun with my buddies. now im checking odds during work meetings and i put $180 on a tuesday night college basketball game i literally know nothing about. i still think im in control but the fact that i even had to google "is sports betting addictive" at 1am is kinda telling? idk. anyone else been here or am i overthinking a hobby EDIT: didnt expect this many replies. i turned on a deposit limit last night and deleted the app off my phone (still can use browser but the extra friction helps). thanks for not making me feel like a total idiot
Asked by throwaway_sundays
16 answers
Best
224
mikeeeee_h
the fact that you googled it at 1am is the answer honestly. i was exactly where you are two seasons ago, started with $5 parlays with the group chat and by january i was doing $200 on korean baseball at 4am because it was the only thing running. what actually helped me was setting a hard deposit limit i couldnt undo for 30 days, My Bookie has that in the account settings and i locked it at like $50/month and it genuinely killed the impulse because the "one more deposit" chase just wasnt possible. the other book i had before that buried the limit tools three menus deep which tells you a lot. also turn off every single push notification, those "your parlay is 1 leg away!!" alerts are engineered to hook you
109
grant_in_cle
yeah can confirm on the notifications thing. i turned those off in september and my handle dropped like 70% without me even trying. the live betting pushes during nfl games were absolutely destroying me, i'd be up at halftime and they'd hit me with a "cash out or double down" prompt and i picked wrong every single time
54
notyourcapper
idk man, everything is addictive if you have no self control. i've bet on every nfl sunday for 6 years, $25 units, never once chased. people blame the app when the actual issue is they never set a budget in the first place. calling it "engineered to hook you" feels like dodging responsibility a little
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3
mikeeeee_h
nah i thought the same thing until it happened to me. i'm not saying nobody can bet responsibly, obviously plenty of people do, you clearly do. but there's a reason these companies hire behavioral psychologists and push same game parlays with terrible hold percentages instead of straight bets. both things can be true, personal responsibility matters AND the product is designed to maximize time on app. i lost $4k over 5 months and i'm a guy who tracks his 401k contributions in a spreadsheet, it's not a discipline thing for everyone
59
quiet_kate88
fwiw the actual clinical term is gambling disorder and it's in the dsm, same category as substance use disorders. the research on in-play/live betting specifically shows way higher problem rates than pregame stuff because the feedback loop is so fast. not saying OP has it, just that "is it addictive" has a pretty boring yes answer from a medical standpoint
8
dsimms_44
wait so does a deposit limit actually stop you or can you just call support and turn it off? feels like they'd want you to keep depositing
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29
grant_in_cle
depends on the book and your state but on the legit ones lowering a limit is instant and raising it has a cooling off period, usually 24hrs to a week. some states mandate it. i tried to bump mine mid-game once during a bills comeback and it made me wait 72 hours, by then i didn't care anymore which was kinda the whole point
40
pauly_two_shoes
genuine question, how do you tell the difference between "i had a bad month" and "i have a problem"? i'm down maybe $900 since september but i also went 3 weeks without betting in october and didn't think about it once
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quiet_kate88
the money isn't really the marker, the behavior is. the stuff that flags is: chasing losses, betting money earmarked for something else, hiding it from people, lying about amounts, and feeling irritable when you can't bet. going 3 weeks without thinking about it is actually a decent sign. the $900 alone doesn't tell you much, people drop that on concert tickets
19
b_reyes
one thing nobody mentions is how normalized it got in like 3 years. every broadcast has an odds segment now, my local sports radio guys read out spreads between segments. when i was a kid you had to know a guy. now it's two taps and you're in on a wnba game you've never watched
16
hcarr_2
1-800-GAMBLER exists and it's actually staffed by real people, not a robot. used it once at like 2am when i was spiraling after a bad sunday. didn't fix anything overnight but talking to someone who'd heard it a thousand times took the shame out of it a bit
10
tenleg_teaser
the math side matters too. a 6 leg same game parlay has like a 20-30% hold for the book depending on correlation. straight bets at -110 are around 4.5%. so if you're mostly parlaying you're not really "betting", you're buying lottery tickets with a sports theme. i switched to straight sides and totals only and my losses got way slower and honestly less fun, which tells you what the parlays were actually doing for me
9
just_here_lurkin_
if you self exclude from one book does it cover all of them or do you have to do each one separately?
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13
dsimms_44
varies by state. a few states have a central self exclusion list run by the gaming commission that covers every licensed operator in that state, others you have to do it book by book which is annoying because you can just hop to the next app. worth checking your state's gaming board site, mine had the form online and it took like ten minutes
5
andrea_pk
my brother in law got in deep with draftkings promos during march madness two years ago, all those "bet $5 get $200 in bonus bets" things. the bonus bets are the trap imo, they get you comfortable placing sizes you'd never place with real money and then when the bonus runs out your normal bet size is just... bigger. he's fine now but it took a hard conversation
3
kev_says_so
seconding the deposit limit thing from the top comment, it's the only thing that ever worked for me. $100 a month, locked. still bet, still have fun sundays, just can't blow up my checking account anymore. OP the fact that you already deleted the app puts you ahead of where most of us were

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