Robert Williams almost shares a name with a famous comedian, and he’s almost as funny. But unlike Robin Williams, Robert works his stand-up routine at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute (AGRI), and his latest comedic one-liner is that British Columbia’s government-run online gambling site PlayNow.com will create legions of new problem gamblers who may have shunned private sites in the past, but will now flock to the ‘safer and more socially acceptable’ state-sponsored option.
This argument, frankly, makes one wonder exactly how they pass their time down at the AGRI, because they obviously aren’t studying the markeplace very carefully. Simply put, NOBODY views PlayNow as a safe place to play, unless you spent your childhood years playing in a boarded-up hand grenade factory.
Secondly, as another, slightly better informed expert claims in the same article, the odds on offer at PlayNow are so shite that even neophyte gamblers will quickly decamp and head for the better options available at the major international gaming operators. But that’s just the point, adds our Robert. See, PlayNow acts as a sort of soft ‘gateway drug’ that inevitably leads to the ‘crack cocaine’ of ‘offshore’ gambling.
For fuck’s sake… We don’t even know where to start debunking that…
If anyone still doubted that the ‘research’ conducted at Robert’s institute consisted of logrolling a bunch of preformed opinions, the final nail in the credibility coffin comes when Robert points to PlayNow’s weekly gambling limit of $10K, multiplies that by the number of weeks in a year, and comes to the conclusion that some of BC’s problem gamblers will be dropping half a mill per year at the site. Dude, if you’ve got half a mill in ready cash lying about, we want your problems.
Still, I secretly hope Robert’s right about that last one. See, I just enrolled in this muscle building course, which claims I can pack on 10 pounds of lean muscle a month. Using Robert’s math, by next September, I’ll be exactly 120 lbs. heavier, all of it rippling, awe-inspiring, chick-impressing musculature. And if I see Robert at the beach, I’ll be sure to kick sand in his face.
