new help with new anti-gambling GF

There are lots of bookies doing introductory offers, where maybe you deposit and bet £100, and they in return give you a free £100 bet, for example. There are also betting exchanges, such as Betfair, which allow you to act as a bookie yourself, by laying bets.

What you do is back (i.e. you bet that it will happen) something with the bookie, let's take as an example whether Sheffield United will beat Middlesbrough in the FA Cup tonight. You then lay the same match at the exchange (i.e. someone bet's you that it will happen, so you are effectively betting that it won't happen).

Regardless of the outcome, you will lose a very small amount of money, unless you can find back odds that are better than the lay odds, thereby locking in a small guaranteed profit. So you might lose £1 on a £100 back/lay, but the bookie gives you a £100 free bet, so you are theoretically £99 up. You then repeat the process with the free bet, maybe lose another £1 in the process, and end up having made £98 overall.

Once you have done all the bookie startup offers (assuming that they ever run out, as new bookies start up all the time), you start looking for odds that are better at the bookies than they are at the exchange, and make money by betting and laying very large sums of money (thousands of pounds) in order to make a few pounds from the difference in odds.

I have made between four and five thousand pounds, i.e. nine to ten thousand US dollars, from matched betting since April last year, and I am a family man with fairly tight finances, but I've built up a decent MB bankroll from an initial investment of fifty pounds.

[quote=riffpoker;721521]Gambling has an economic definition, referring to wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome.[quote]

Isn't that exactly what taking a girl out is? Of course you don't win money, but you might get something else .

And that's why some call it getting lucky...

I consider myself a winning player... and my Fiance has no problem with it... Because when I win, SHE wins.... even if i lose she still wins because if you lose and then stop spending thats when they will get mad. I win she wins i lose she wins because i dont' harp on the losses and stop spending cuz otherwise she would feel if i lose we have to stop living for a week or two to get the finances back... bottom line is don't use what you can't afford to lose.

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO NOT HAVE FUN AND DO WHAT YOU ENJOY!!!!!
TOMORROW IS NOT GUARANTEED!!!! WHY WORK FOR MONEY IF YOUR NOT GOING TO ENJOY YOUR HOBBY!!!
WINNING MONEY JUST COMES WITH THE GAME BUT I PLAY POKER AS A HOBBY BECAUSE I LOVE THE GAME!!!!

To the OP. I sympathise entirely with your situation as it sounds very similar to my own.

My GF is morally opposed to gambling due to past experiences from her childhood and the cost to her family from her father gambling.

We have been together now for 6 years and I started getting into poker about 2 years ago.

When she found out that I had taken up this new hobby she was angry and everything came out. Initially she said it was her or poker.

While that sounds very blunt and most people would probably think, geeez just get rid of her, I took a step back and thought about it.

I thought about how she felt with respect to the emotional distress it caused her due to her past experiences. She was making comparisons in her mind between myself and her father. No amount of reassuring her that I was not playing with money I could not afford or that just because I am playing poker doesn't make me a gambling addict changed her point of view.

I told her that this was a hobby that I enjoyed. I told her that while I understood how she felt I was not going to stop playing because I was not like her father and she needed to look rationally at the situation.

We are still together though and even though throughout the last 2 years, poker has been at the heart of many arguments I have learnt to be sensitive to her feelings.

I generally only play when either she is not at home/at work, or she has gone to bed, so I get a couple of hours in the evening to play and I don't feel guilty that I am upsetting her.

I don't play as much as I would like, but that comes with the territory and the decision I have made to commit to a relationship with her and we now have a daughter together.

Ideally I would love to play MTT's and more tourney's get in more hours of play. I have to accept that I can't do this (apart from when she is away). Sometimes I feel that I would be happier on my own, being able to play whenever I like etc, but then I think about what I would be giving up, and it gives me a reality check.

She still doesn't like me playing when she is in the room, which again for some people may seem dumb. It may be, but she is my partner and it is about compromise.

I doubt she will ever except gambling, no matter what form it takes.

I play a home game at a mates place every couple of week, which she knows about and has again come to accept that this is what I do to have fun.

I have no doubt that poker will cause arguments in the future. I will continue to reassure her that I only play with money I can afford (i,e spare) and that it is a hobby, just like anything else, and one that makes me happy.

I hope this helps a little bit and you can draw some parellels to your situation.

also you can try pooping in a plastic bag and throwing it at her

Make sure you do what you really want too. We don't know anything about your girlfriend or you. We certainly wouldn't be in a position to give any advice. I would assume that most of the posts here, would have to only be opinions.

FWIW:

My girlfriend wasn't too keen on me gambling when I started playing poker either. So I agreed with her I was going to set a budget for playing ($100 a month for playing live) and if I lost that then no more (until the next month, or whatever). She was cool with that - of course, she still thinks I spend too much time playing, and she could be right about that sometimes, but that's how we solved the money issue.

Incidentally, it also helped to point out that being in a band (what I did for a laugh before I took up poker) actually cost a lot more. I still find it a laugh to be able to talk to my musician friends and tell them "Y'know... since I've taken up gambling as a hobby, I'm actually losing money a lot slower than I was playing in a band..."

"In the poker game of life, women are the rake."