Zillions of play money players: why don't they play for real?

[MicroBob]

Had a neighbor who plays on play-money tables somewhere.
On Yahoo perhaps?
In her 50's with a couple of cats. She was my pet-sitter when I was out of town.

Tried to tell her that she could play for just pennies on places like pokerstars if she wanted to. She would literally be unlikely to lose more than a $1 in a given session of .01/.02.
But she still wasn't interested.

Funny thing is that she occasionally goes down to Tunica and plays the slots.

And I know she has no problem buying stuff with her credit-card because she gets a lot of packages from the Home Shopping Network.

I think there's something with depositing REAL money online with an actual gambling site that makes people ill-at-ease.

If the sites were allowed to fully advertise their dot-com sites they could overcome some of this stuff just with basic info/propaganda.

"It's safe. It's easy. You can win a seat to the WSOP for only $2. Thousands of players are on right now all playing for REAL money all the way from penny-stakes up to our high-roller tables with thousands of dollars on the line.
Depositing into our secure network for as little as $10 will get you started on the road to riches....and you'll get a free $10 bonus as our welcome gift to you."


Talking in terms of actual money and how many people are actuially doing it would encourage more people to give it a try.

The dot-net ads just aren't as effective at getting people over the hump, "Learn to practice and play like the pros. NOT a gambling site."