Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Here's a story from right here in Detroit, where a guy who lost a fortune gambling thinks he should get his money returned because he was "brainwashed."
The 61-year-old professional engineer indulged his appetite for cards, slots and game tables at MotorCity Casino in Detroit for a decade, losing $673,854 of his own money.Looking back, Parise says he believes he was brainwashed by the casino to keep coming back to gamble more.
And now that he says his head is clear, Parise -- who says he hasn't set foot in a gambling hall since March -- wants his money back from the casino he blames for his losses.
And he's got his rhetoric revved up for the task:
In the suit, to be heard Friday in Wayne Circuit Court, Parise alleges the casino "knew or should have known of his enormous financial losses" and did not make any attempt "to aid" him in stopping them.In an interview with The Detroit News, Parise said the casinos market themselves as places of entertainment when they are in, in his opinion, illegal operations that deceive the public.
"These places, they suck people in. It's not gambling, it's brainwashing. They take money from you until it is gone," he said.
Illegal? Michigan passed a law explicitly legalizing the opening of that casino, by public referendum. This guy is an idiot.
Politics
Comments
We used to call that "a sore loser" back in the olden days. It's like blaming the heroin for your drug addiction.
Posted by: Budbear | September 26, 2009 9:28 AM
This man obviously needs a bailout! Where's Nancy Pelosi when you need her?
Posted by: mad the swine | September 26, 2009 9:33 AM
To be fair, casinos do use a lot of psychological tricks to keep you in there. My favourite is the way the lighting never changes, so you don't realise how long you've been in there. I also believe slot machines are calibrated so that the average gap between payouts is just enough to keep you interested, while still losing.
Guy's still a sore loser, though.
Posted by: Snoof | September 26, 2009 10:11 AM
Hey, he simply looked at what the big banks and finance companies have been doing, and said to himself "I can do that..."
Posted by: Graham Shevlin | September 26, 2009 10:52 AM
Don't you need a brain to be able to claim brainwashing?
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | September 26, 2009 10:59 AM
Since Orly Taitz is being kicked off her current case, she'd be available to help with this one ....
Posted by: Scott Hanley | September 26, 2009 11:35 AM
Wasn't this an Albert Brooks movie?
Posted by: Ranson | September 26, 2009 12:59 PM
If you walk into one of those places, you are already a loser.
Posted by: MarkusR | September 26, 2009 2:29 PM
I visited Las Vegas for several Comdex conventions, and it's a fun place even if you don't gamble. A moment's thought would tell you they didn't build the enormous casino by selling bargain-priced gourmet buffet meals and giving free fountain shows to passers-by. The place was built (at least paid for) by losers. How else?
Posted by: george.w | September 26, 2009 2:42 PM
Actually, it's more like blaming his dealer. As ridiculous as it is for him to actually sue the casino, it is really hard for me to find any sympathy for the casino.
Posted by: JasonTD | September 26, 2009 2:47 PM
george:
I had an amusing conversation with a poker room supervisor when I was there in January the week after either ComDex or the CES, I forget which. I asked him if those big conventions made the poker room busier and he said, "No. The electronic geeks come to town with a clean shirt and $20 and leave town with a dirty shirt and $20."
Posted by: Ed Brayton | September 26, 2009 3:14 PM
Remember all the people bragging about how much they made risking money on real estate? Then when the bubble popped they cried and wanted someone (the bank that loaned them the money) to make them rich again. People want unregulated capitalism going up and socialism going down. Gimme my back, you're a meany.
Posted by: soboco | September 26, 2009 4:39 PM
There's no doubt the casinos do have a lot of techniques for keeping people inside and at the games. Only works on a particular type, though. I have no moral qualms with gambling, but I find it dismally boring. my personal record at slots is about 15 minutes, about 10 at the black jack tables, and I've never done more than pause at a roulette table.
Oddly, though, I can play the carnival games at Circus Circus for hours. If only they paid out something other than beanie babies...
Posted by: James Hanley | September 26, 2009 5:32 PM
Case dismissed.
Posted by: Dr X | September 26, 2009 6:31 PM
I enjoy card games with friends but have never fathomed the appeal of casinos. If I'm going to drop a couple of hundred dollars in one evening I want something to show for it.
Posted by: Shay | September 26, 2009 7:41 PM
So true. And the electeds keep giving it to us, so, when it comes to taking the mortgage loan modification subsidized by your neighbors or going into foreclosure, is there really much time needed to make the choice?
Posted by: andnone | September 26, 2009 11:29 PM
They have slot machines at the gates in Reno Airport where I once changed planes, so I figured I would try it. I played once, losing a quarter I think it was, and that was that. You can do it just once.
Posted by: Bill Poser | September 27, 2009 1:13 AM
This applies to the "health care" debate as well:
Most healthy people would rather spend their money on things they want to than on unhealthy people.
Few unhealthy people really care how much of your money they must spend getting healthy again.
Posted by: andnone | September 27, 2009 6:44 AM
I'm unimpressed by the unpleasant glee in this article and the comments. Some guy was stupid enough to be seduced by gambling and had a huge amount of money taken from him. And you guys cackle merrily about it. OK, perhaps you have shares in casinos.
An educated guy losing the money over a decade, OK, that suggests he should carry the blame. I don't have a great deal of sympathy. But nor do I delight in it.
I know you're all worshippers at some wacky "freedom" altar, but at some point, decent societies protect their weaker members from the ravaging attention of the stronger members. And sometimes that might mean trying to protect them from their own bad judgement, whether children or adults.
Posted by: Sam C | September 27, 2009 9:10 AM
@Sam C
In what way is an engineer who managed to lose $673,854 in a decade a weaker member of society? This isn't a telemarketer ripping off a lonely old lady. This isn't a loan shark (or credit card company) charging usury rates.
Any social compact can't prevent bad decisions. Bad decisions are bad because they cost something. He lost half-a-million. He should consider himself lucky that he had that money to lose in the first place. Instead, he's trying to game the system further to recover his loses and deflect responsibility. If my society protects him over the homeless and hungry, then the problem isn't some wacky "freedom" altar. Instead, the problem is freedom from thought.
Posted by: Jonathan | September 27, 2009 12:40 PM
I don't know about anybody else here, but I don't find his losses the least bit funny. I think it's sad that he screwed up his life that way. What I find funny is that a presumably intelligent adult actually thinks that it's somebody else's fault and that other people are going to agree with him.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | September 27, 2009 5:45 PM
This guy might actually have a scientific argument, he just doesn't know it. The question is whether the casino knew you have a problem with gambling and targeted you for that reason.
Datamining is the cornerstone of many major corporations – such as google and amazon, but Harrah’s (and casinos in general) uses this data in a similar but more ‘diabolical’ way, according to the best selling author of SuperCrunchers. Harrah’s is capable of calculating the ‘pain point’ of players and adjusts their rewards to encourage people to play more or to ensure that some freebie will help players have a more positive experience despite leaving with an empty wallet. The question I have is if a casino can calculate the ‘pain point’ of a player then there must be an equation for calculating when a player is developing a ‘problem.’
Time and time again data mining has shown that you can extrapolate trends and predict behavior to an incredible accuracy. Access to other data mining services means that the casinos likely know a lot more about the players then simply the data collected via the player card – although that alone is enough to probably detect dangerous trends. CNBC did a story about data mining and the big business of providing information. http://www.hulu.com/watch/46559/cnbc-originals-big-brother-big-business In other words, it is completely probable that casinos not only know how long you play, how much you wager, and how much you’ve won or lost – but also how much you make, how much you have in debt, if you own a home, your ethnicity and other person details.
The question for me is whether the casino is using data the very same way the cigarette industry used ammonia – to enhance the addictiveness and extract profit. If someone is visibly drunk at a bar you can’t serve them a drink. But what if a person is clearly showing problematic behavior – something harrah’s probably is aware of becuase they are monitoring players and calculating pain points. Does Harrah's target such a person who has a problem, knowing they seem to have an escalating and irrational gambling habit? And if, as I would suspect, the casino knows the income and debt of a player and it’s clear that this person is wagering more money then they could possibly have how does the casino handle this information? Far too often I read about bank managers, city officials, etc whose embezzlement can be traced directly back to casinos. There are patterns and equations to detect problem gambling otherwise it would call into question a whole field of mathematics that is the competitive advantage of some of the world’s most successful internet companies.
Posted by: Bad Odds | September 28, 2009 12:42 PM
Yes, this guy is an idiot. However, I also think he's a poster child for why legalized gambling is a poor public policy choice.
Posted by: katydid13 | September 28, 2009 5:56 PM
-is the way the lighting never changes-
Neither do my house lights....
It takes you nearly 700,000 dollars to realise you have a problem over 10 years. Yet you expect random casinos to realise the same thing before you do?
-"These places, they suck people in. It's not gambling, it's brainwashing. They take money from you until it is gone," he said.-
Sounds like my local bar.
Posted by: Richard Eis | September 29, 2009 8:07 AM