Gambling Figures Escalate PDF

# Gambling Figures Escalate ## Pre-Reading Questions 1. What forms of gambling have you heard of? 2. How popular is gambling in your country? 3. Some people think that gambling does more harm than good. What is your view? ## Reading Passage A rather worrying statistic shows that, in some countri...

# Gambling Figures Escalate ## Pre-Reading Questions 1. What forms of gambling have you heard of? 2. How popular is gambling in your country? 3. Some people think that gambling does more harm than good. What is your view? ## Reading Passage A rather worrying statistic shows that, in some countries, gambling is the fastest growing leisure pursuit. It appears that many people like to bet and are prepared to gamble on everything from horseracing to bingo to state-run lotteries. Some people gamble only occasionally. For example, they may choose always to have a flutter on a horse of their choice in a particular race every year, sometimes attending the race meeting and sometimes going to a betting shop. For the rest of the year, they simply do not give horseracing a thought and never go near a bookmaker's. There again, a group of friends might occasionally spend an evening at a casino to try their luck at roulette, but stop before they spend more than they intended. A popular pastime, especially with some older ladies, is to attend a bingo hall to see if they can hit the jackpot by having all the numbers on their cards called. Most of them think of it as just a bit of fun. ## Doing the football pools is a common form of household gambling. People fill out football coupons by predicting the result of various football matches and send them off to the pools company running the scheme. ## Then there are the various national lotteries. In order to win one of these, and the odds are often extremely high, someone has to have purchased a lottery ticket which bears the same numbers as the ones officially selected as the winning numbers. Lotteries are often in aid of good causes and so people do not usually see such gambling as a vice. ## Gambling can be a harmless form of entertainment, but it can lead to a serious form of addiction. There are many compulsive gamblers who simply cannot stop themselves from placing bets and bring ruin on themselves and their families. The only thing for them to do is to give up gambling altogether. For them, there is no such thing as the occasional flutter. Help is available from organizations such as Gamblers Anonymous, but first they must try to help themselves. ## Vocabulary Study | Word | Definition | |---|---| | Addiction | The condition of being unable to stop doing or using something, especially something harmful. | | Addicted | Having an addiction to something. | | Addict | A person who suffers from an addiction. | | Bet | To risk a sum of money on the unknown result of something, such as a horse race, by trying to predict this and so win money. | | Betting Shop | (Same as bookmaker's) a shop where you can place bets on a horse race or other events. |