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The Experience of Play. Making Millions the Easy Way. The Experience of Play. Reith brings our attention to the fact that our experiences of “something” arise from our perceptions.
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The Experience of Play • Reith brings our attention to the fact that our experiences of “something” arise from our perceptions. • These perceptions are mediated by consciousness, thus allowing many worlds of consciousness to pervade human experience. • Hence, each gambler will perceive himself/herself in many ways which is mediated by the gambling arena and the idea of play itself.
Theme One: Excitement • Adventure – Dream State • For some gamblers entering into the gambling arena temporarily allows them to (consciously/unconsciously) step out of the real world. • This has been termed: • Dissociation • Trance phenomena • Pathological dreaming
Dostoevsky and the Dream State • Speaking about the dream state Dostoevsky remarks: • “I lost track of the amount and order of my stakes. I only remember as if in a dream”
Trance States • Other gambler’s report the dream state as being like this: • I think it was more, it was like, it was unreal. Like I was okay, I was stepping outside my own body and I was watching myself walk into this bar, and I’m watching myself throw money in this machine. And it’s like, it’s not really happening, right. It was, I don’t know how you would actually describe something like that. I was actually down here in the safe-way parking lot. Because we were living just down on ah, off of thirteen street and eighth avenue. So I was down there, just walking up from the grocery store, and ended up instead of walking to the grocery store I walked into the bar and threw money into the machines. It was like, I zoned out there for a second. It was like I partitioned my mind. One part of my mind said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this”, and the other part, “Doesn’t really give a shit, and I going to go do it anyway, right.”
Thrill of the Play • One of the most striking aspects of the experience of gambling is the tension or “thrill” of the game. • The apex of the gambling experience is the moment when excitement peaks and gamblers are gripped by the fever of play, playing on and on, oblivious to their surroundings, to their losses, to the passage of time. • In this state, the gambler becomes a creature of sensation; seeing, but not really being aware of their surroundings; perceiving, but not truly cognizant of what is going on.
Phenomenological experiences of the “thrill’. • And when we were down in Reno, they had been down their before and they would drop me off at one of the casino’s and go shopping and not come back for five or six hours. It was fascinating, because I mean, cause when you did win it would come out, and you put it right back in. So the first day they dropped me off about four o-clock and they didn’t pick me up until midnight. And I had pots and pots of money but I didn’t want to cash them in, I wanted to take them back to the hotel. It was a real high I’m telling you. You get excited that you get that amount of money and the adrenaline in there and you get back to the hotel and you can’t get to sleep cause those machines are right there, you just want to play them. But my friends wanted to go to sleep, but I was all jazzed up, I wanted to play, I wasn’t going to go and sleep.
Phenomenological experiences of the “thrill’. • Just constantly playing and when you run out of money, well then I didn’t want to go home before he went to bed or before he went to work, so I would stay out until then, then come home then, many times slept in the car just so I wouldn’t have to face him. It was, I did that many, many nights. I just had such an overwhelming feeling that I was going to win it big, which I did at different times, I mean large amounts, one night at the El’ Rancho, I won twenty-two-hundred dollars and then I stayed at a motel and hid the money under the mattress and I was back there first thing in the morning. I mean it was, it was the action and it was about the rush.
The Alteration of Identity • The third quality of play inherent to gambling and more specifically is the altering of identity through game playing. • This gambling identity is one in which the everyday self is left behind and another persona, is adopted. • In this way gambling provides the opportunity to present an idealized identity to oneself and others. • Here the gambler can affirm their self-worth and the gambling environment becomes a place where one’s existence cam be confirmed (psychologically and environmentally).
Phenomenological experiences of altering one’s identity • It’s really all about identity. You know what, when I have money in my pocket, I’m the greatest looking guy there is, I don’t care what people think about me. But when I’m in a bit of bind, I am opening doors for people, and if I won. . . I would go into the lounge and brag about it. I would go, ‘I just won five grand!’ And the ladies would go, ‘Really!’ It worked for them. . . I would buy drinks and then after they would go home and the best looking guy would be sitting there alone again. But, I would wake up with 2,500 [dollars] in my pocket, and go gamble again.
Phenomenological experiences of altering one’s identity • We played roulette for a couple of hours and then I was consistently back there, bringing my friends back there. And we would go every weekend. This might sound really bad, butI have to tell you. Good looking blonde girls, you know, playing the scene. And having a great time, wearing the clothes, playing the part, like a big shot, this sounds really bad, cause I’m not really like that anymore, but I look back, oh I was such a bitch. I was playing the role, I was, ah, oh yeah, I was getting a name, I ended up getting a name, I was the roulette Queen. Because there were some points, because I won so much money at roulette that people could not believe it. It was like who wants to marry a millionaire. I could have been you know, I could have been throwing money up in the air going holy shit. I won six thousand three hundred one night. You know it pushed away the old image I had in my head, you know. A little bit more insight here, insecurity. I was always told by my mother, and I don’t think I’m an ugly person, but I was always told by my mother that I was built like a brick shit house. That I was never going to amount to anything, so all of those things added up. To give me the, I needed to re-invent myself and being the roulette queen made me feel like I was somebody.
Boredom • Stepping outside the gambling arena, players find the world unutterably dull in comparison to the one they have just left. • Seeking a release from monotony, gamblers plunge into the tension of the game, only to come face to face with the everyday world and all its attendant tedium when they remerge from play
Phenomenology of Boredom • One gambler stated: • Well at home my husband was always working and then he goes to sleep earlier and I was bored. So I started to go to bingo and then I found that it was boring after a couple years and then I started to play VLT’s. Let me tell you their fast money, Oooo, yeah, and then I guess I wasn’t bored anymore. . . But a few years later, I had some big problems.
Repetition • The renown cultural theorist and philosopher, Jean Baudrillard had this to say about repetition: • The desire to know the result of the next round, to put one’s fate to the test once more entices the gambler to play on, and so creates ‘the vertigo of seduction.”
Phenomenology of Repetition • I believe I had something like 4000 Gulden in my hands within 5 mins. That’s when I should have quit. But a funny feeling came over me, some sort of desire to challenge fate, an uncontrollable urge to stick my tongue out at it, to give it a flip on the nose. • Fydor Dostoevsky
Phenomenology of Repetition • One gambler describes repetition in this way: • I had one trip to Vegas. I stayed up, I remember being sober up to my elbows, I played the machines all night. Way after my husband went to bed, like I played them all night. I didn’t remember winning or losing, I had so much money I didn’t care. I was doing great! Other than the fact I was a raving addict! (laughing). Yup, I, everything was tense for me, everything, my life was always on full speed, everything was spinning. I just played and played, just waiting for the big hit and then you would win and they you would wait for the next hit. Oh yeah, it was a real zinger.
Time • Hence, in an instant, the uncertain becomes known; the future becomes the present. • In this frozen instance, in which the gambler lives only for the moment, time has lost its articulation. • In this place, time can be said to be the gambler’s “narcotic.”
Phenomenology of a gambler’s time • I went to a ringette tournament with my daughter; it was over at ten o-o’clock. Her equipment was in the trunk of my Supra. We had to two vehicles; I said, ‘Al, drive her home I have got to do something.’ Well I went right to the **** ****, right at ten o’clock when the lights go on, and she had another game at one-thirty. Well, he shows up at the **** **** just after her game started, his face is all red. I hid my car up the alley so he wouldn’t find it, and he said, ‘Your kid is standing outside the ***** crying, because her mother is off gambling somewhere and you got her equipment.’ Well, I remember sitting back being pissed off, ‘get out of here.’ I felt little bit guilty, but, here’s the keys, get lost. I did care, but not enough to get off my machine until 3:00 in the morning. By that time nothing could tear me away. I don’t know if it would have mattered if one of them would have been hit by a car.
Time (cont.) • The constant cycle of the ever-same implies a cycle of no real change. Nothing occurs to distinguish one at the casino, one day at the bookmakers, from anything. • In the end, the gambling arena can close players off from the outside world and from themselves. • Thus, they are frozen in the present, but without any no real change, one is led into an empty hell.
Phenomenology of an empty hell. • It was all the game! It really didn’t matter who was around, or what was around me I really didn’t (pause) care. I would go out gambling and all I cared about was the gambling. It was just about the game. If I would just kept on playing the game forever, as in, because its unlike anything I have tried, alcohol, you to still have your emotions when you smoke pot, when your gambling you have nothing but the game. The game completely um, is everything, like it’s, it’s, the world completely revolves around the game and your really not thinking about anything except for the gambling itself.
The phenomenology of money • It had nothing to do with the money, absolutely nothing to do with the money, accept with having to deal with all my creditors, because at that point money wasn’t even real. The money you put into the VLT’S wasn’t real, the credits weren’t real, the money you get back isn’t real, none of that is the issue. What the issue was, what the whole thing was about was playing the VLT’S.
The phenomenology of money • For money brings about meaning and this is the medium by which players are brought to the game. • Reith holds that in modern gambling, money is both a means of communication and a tangible symbol of the player’s presence. • Thus it creates the affective tension – the excitement and it also talks for the gambler symbolically.
The phenomenology of money • Yeah it was the excitement, about playing, going and watching the flashing lights, good chance to win some money. But it wasn’t the money, it was, it’s hard to explain what it was. Just me against the machines I guess. I Just wanted to beat the machines.
The Importance of Money • In all, money comes assume magical properties, but it still remains an insubstantial chimera that contributes to the sense of unreality and the affective tension experienced by gamblers during play.
