Re:Why do people place such a sucker bet anyway? (Score 1)

Might as well become a day-trader and play the stock market for your fix. It would be a lot more regulated than most online poker.

Here's another point: the stock market isn't zero sum. At the end of the night of poker, the sum of all the money at the table is the same as the sum when it all began. It was just shuffled around. At a casino, the dealer snarfs a few chips from every hand as a rake, one of the big reasons I just don't play at a casino.

A stock market isn't zero sum and that opens up many possibilities and many risks. Let's say someone sells 1 million shares for a dollar at an IPO. Then the company does something really brilliant making the shares worth $1000 a piece. The money at the table went from 1 million to 1 billion thanks to the hard work of the people at the company.

Of course this can also go in the other direction as we've seen lately. But I think gambling on the stock market is much more interesting because of this fact. It's not mano-a-mano grubbing to beat out the person next to you. It's a collaborative effort to improve the world. I would be overstating it to say that everyone can win in the stock market, but there's something to the idea. :-)