“The world is like a reverse casino. In a casino, if you gamble long enough, you’re certainly going to lose. But in the real world, where the only thing you’re gambling is, say, your time or your embarrassment, then the more stuff you do, the more you give luck a chance to find you.” –Scott Adams

One of the most famous gambling icons of the Philippines is an Ilonggo businessman with operations in Cebu and Negros, along with Iloilo. He said, before the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), Filipinos were already involved in gambling.
“Gambling can become a form of genuine entertainment if professionalized and regulated,” quipped the Ilonggo businessman, who helped build one of the most modern cockpit stadiums in Asia.
He would probably agree, even without PCSO gaming operations, Filipinos will still find a way to gamble—the public can live without the lottery but not gambling altogether.
There are certain gambling activities that are more popular (or “addictive”) than others as Filipinos engage in gambling primarily for economic reasons. They are looking for a quick fix to poverty and believe, if lucky enough, their financial woes will be resolved.
Cockfighting, card games, or “Jueteng,” Filipino gamblers are always at it; and if they don’t have the funds, they borrow or steal.
Philippine National Police (PNP) Director-General Oscar Albayalde noted, following President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to suspend all PCSO gaming operations after the Commission on Audit issued a report that found the agency had P6 billion in missing revenue, “Jueteng” and other illegal number game shave seen a resurgence.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, director of Nottingham Trent University’s International Gaming Research Unit, said gambling preferences are through to result from accessibility and motivation; he noted, older people tend to choose activities that minimize the need for complex decision-making or concentration (bingo, slot machines).
In addition, gender; culture; and sex-role socialization, or how one develops behaviors based on gender, all play a role in gambling preferences.
Griffiths explained: “Slot machine players may gamble to win money, for enjoyment and excitement, to socialize, and to escape negative feelings. Some people gamble for one reason only, whereas others gamble for a variety of reasons. A further complexity is that people’s motivations for gambling have a strong temporal dimension; that is, they do not remain stable over time.”
As people progress from social to regular behavior, and finally to excessive gambling, there are often significant changes in their reasoning.
According to Griffiths: “A person might have initially gambled to obtain enjoyment, excitement, and socialization; the progression to ‘problem gambling’ is almost always accompanied by an increased preoccupation with winning money and chasing losses. Gambling is clearly a multifaceted rather than unitary phenomenon. Consequently, many factors may come into play in various ways and at different levels of analysis (e.g. biological, social, or psychological). Theories may be complementary rather than mutually exclusive, which suggests that limitations of individual theories might be overcome through the combination of ideas from different perspectives. This has often been discussed before in terms of recommendations for an eclectic approach to gambling or a distinction between proximal and distal influences upon gambling. However, for the most part, such discussions have been descriptive rather than analytical, and so far, few attempts have been made to explain why an adherence to singular perspectives is untenable.”

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Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo./WDJ