Whether it is Yudhisthir staking his wife in a gamble with his cunning cousins, or James Bond challenging his mortal enemies in the world of espionage, or Sharmila Tagore, who has never gambled before, expressing her desire to place yet another bet on a horse in Satyajit Ray’s Seemabaddha, nothing can be quite as thrilling in fiction as the all-or-nothing compulsions of gambling. In real life, too, the excitement is so high and infectious that casinos are never short of customers at tourist spots although it is known that no gambler can beat the odds at the roulette table.
It is not surprising, therefore, that conservative individuals and governments frown on such risky ventures which can lead to financial ruin for a person and his family. To them, the penchant for laying bets is like any other addiction, where the momentary exhilaration blinds one to the ill-effects of the habit over a long period. The compulsive gamblers have been branded, therefore, as psychological cases who believe that they cannot lose since they are sure that the chips cannot but finally fall in the right place. Craving for the deadly game keeps growing.
While medicinal and psychological treatment is necessary for these addicts, an international team of researchers has suggested that the gambling instinct is rooted in the course of evolution. They believe that the basic survival techniques of the early humans have fostered the instinct since they involved a huge amount of risk-taking.Since every option which the primitive man took to avoid a danger was based on calculating the chances of success, it was perhaps inevitable that the habit of examining the odds in every situation became a part of his mental make-up. Since gambling reflects this trait, the researchers believe that they know why some of the methods of treatment cannot be effective.