News

The Otago Daily Times ran another groundbreaking article last week, revealing to the world at large that gambling on the pokies is not a great way to make money. The article focused on ‘Tony’, former University of Otago BCom student, who lost “thousands” playing the pokies while a student.


Critic responded to the piece by quickly shelving plans that called for most of the publication’s post-VSM income to be derived from twice-weekly trips to the Dunedin Casino, before sitting down to write a disparaging article about the ODT’s attempt at ‘journalism’.
Amazingly the ODT managed to spin the tale of a degenerate accounting student blowing his student loan money into an 1173 word story, which is a solid three times longer than the regurgitation you are presently reading.
The article opened with the suitably outrageous suggestion that Tony’s accounting degree was somehow partly to blame for his obsession with the pokies.
“A head for numbers and figures initially gave Tony a ‘sense of control’ when he started playing the pokies, until his monthly bank statements highlighted the ‘horrendous’ amounts he was losing on a regular basis.”
 
“As part of his studies, he became accustomed to having figures and dollars on his mind and he became adept at analysing the amounts of money he was gambling”.
 
Critic, impressed by the man’s honed powers of self-deception, and his startling ability to read a bank statement, made a half-hearted attempt to find out his identity, with a view to offering him employment in Critic’s non-existent accounting department. We imagine his control of our expense account would be lax at best.
Meanwhile, for a professional perspective on the issue of problem gambling, Critic turned to our own resident gambling addict, degenerate reporter Lozz Holding. Holding told Critic that a good gambling addiction was hard to develop on $160 a week. “I would like to have a romantic gambling addiction, the kind where you lose your family, sleep in a gutter, kick the habit, find redemption, and then score a book deal. But when you are reduced to betting $2 a spin on red, it just doesn’t pack that emotional punch.”
 
“Also, why was he playing the pokies, everyone knows you can’t beat pokies. Roulette, now roulette’s a different story.”
 
Holding went on to describe an intricate system he employed at the roulette table, which primarily consisted of doubling his bet every time he lost. Solid.