The perils of gambling: finger-eating card tables and voluntary ear amputations

russian-gamblers-severed-earsThe UK’s leading purveyor of celebrity side-boob photos has once again found time to warn English mothers of the insidious plot by social gaming companies to turn toddlers into gambling addicts. A report in Friday’s Daily Mail warns that social games have a vaguely defined ‘moreishness quality’ that transforms children into zombified Walking Dead extras laying siege to the doors of high street betting shops in the vain hope of getting at the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBT) casting come-hither stares from behind the glass.

Despite demonstrated evidence that social gamers and real-money gamblers are two distinct species with little crossover appeal, the Mail’s latest Chicken Little report is virtually identical to previous articles it has run on the subject, all featuring the same sources making the same End Times predictions. It leads one to conclude that the Mail has a computer script that automatically changes the dates on the articles and refiles them every three months. But hey, the Mail’s pages aren’t going to fill themselves and you can’t rely on Kate Moss inadvertently exposing her ‘moreishness quality’ every time she gets out of a limo.

That’s not to say gambling can’t be dangerous. On Jan. 4, a Vietnamese man was killed after the police raided an illegal gambling den in the southern province of Dong Nai. Thanh Nien News reported that Lao Nguyen Sau was among 20 gamblers playing cards when the police burst through the doors. But as the gamblers scrambled for the alternate exits, a policeman’s gun ‘accidentally’ discharged, and the 39-year-old Sau died en route to hospital.

Trigger-happy police aren’t the only perils of a gambling life. Just two days into the New Year, Walmart recalled a card table because the four chairs that came with it were prone to collapsing unexpectedly, “posing a fall hazard and a risk of finger injury, including finger amputation.” Bloody hell… Can you imagine going through life as a gambler without a middle finger to aim in the Mail’s direction every now and then?

But the new poster children for the evils of gambling have to be the two Russians who each cut off a left ear to honor a bet in an arm wrestling contest. According to police in the Kemerovo region of Siberia, the two Russians were drinking to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas season when they decided to arm wrestle, with the loser agreeing to cut off his own ear. But once the loser had been identified, he demanded a rematch, which he proceeded to win. But instead of sensibly calling it a draw and singing another drunken chorus of Deck the Halls with Ears of Comrades, the men decided they’d each honor the wager and off went their left ears. So who’s to blame here? Gambling? Alcohol? Christmas? If we’re the Mail‘s editors, we’d pin the blame on the ear-severing scene in Reservoir Dogs because Quentin Tarantino‘s name is always good for click-through.