Speech on Gambling

[Tyrannosaurus]

I'm taking an education class, and I have to deliver a 15 minute speech. It can be about most anything. The class is about 30 people, mostly senior health majors. My brief outline is

-The stigma of gambling, and how it used to be so associated with

drinking, crime, and prostitution.

-EV calculations and how to use them for a variety of things

-The blue hand commercial (I can't find it, anyone know where it is? youtube? I don't even remember who made it.)

_Sports Betting, and i'll give some recent examples of local teams
-Casino Games

-Poker, and how it's different than lots of gambling because you're not playing the house

-Other online betting, and I'll give examples of stuff like betting

on movie opening weekends, with some examples that they would have

heard of

-Pro's and Con's of gambling for a living (money, schedule, variance, hanging out with degenerates, etc)

-Industry stats

-Regulation, laws, and lottery

-gambling addiction? I'm kinda taking the position that although people can be addicted to gambling, it's not so much different than girls getting credit cards and going into debt, except there's a lot more marketing going into making you spend money than there is trying to make you gamble.

Basically I want this to be really interactive. I want to start most topics with audience interaction (how much did harry potter 5 make opening weekend, Anyone know how much the Ducks were favored by last week? Who here has heard of Texas Hold 'em)

Anything else i could talk about? Anyone have cool ideas for how to approach this? I want to make gambling look good, and clear up some misconceptions about it. I want this to be fun and funny. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[rivermetimbers]

you should log onto w/e site you play on, play poker for about 5 minutes and upon losing 3 buyins still try to convince them its +EV

[Pokerdemic]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm taking an education class, and I have to deliver a 15 minute speech. It can be about most anything. The class is about 30 people, mostly senior health majors. My brief outline is

-The stigma of gambling, and how it used to be so associated with

drinking, crime, and prostitution.

-EV calculations and how to use them for a variety of things

-The blue hand commercial (I can't find it, anyone know where it is? youtube? I don't even remember who made it.)

_Sports Betting, and i'll give some recent examples of local teams
-Casino Games

-Poker, and how it's different than lots of gambling because you're not playing the house

-Other online betting, and I'll give examples of stuff like betting

on movie opening weekends, with some examples that they would have

heard of

-Pro's and Con's of gambling for a living (money, schedule, variance, hanging out with degenerates, etc)

-Industry stats

-Regulation, laws, and lottery

-gambling addiction? I'm kinda taking the position that although people can be addicted to gambling, it's not so much different than girls getting credit cards and going into debt, except there's a lot more marketing going into making you spend money than there is trying to make you gamble.

Basically I want this to be really interactive. I want to start most topics with audience interaction (how much did harry potter 5 make opening weekend, Anyone know how much the Ducks were favored by last week? Who here has heard of Texas Hold 'em)

Anything else i could talk about? Anyone have cool ideas for how to approach this? I want to make gambling look good, and clear up some misconceptions about it. I want this to be fun and funny. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]


So are you trying to clear up some misconceptions about gambling? Or are you trying to clear up some misconceptions about poker? If you are trying to clear up some misconceptions about gambling, that's going to be a much tougher sell. I love poker, but frankly I think Atlantic City Casinos are some of the saddest places I've ever been, so while you could easily clear up misconceptions about poker, gambling in general is a much different issue.


Personally, I think the outline is too broad and too vague for a 15 minute speech, and some of the positions you take won't be worth much unless you back them up with decent research....are you supposed to draw on outside sources? You should, even if it wasn't specified.

Granted, talking about everything you listed will make it incredibly easy to get 15 minutes, but the outline you presented looks more like a ramble to me than a focused speech.

Why not base your speech around the poker industry and what makes the game fundamentally different than most -EV types of gambling. You could also pull up a HH discussion from the strategy forums to show that a fantastic amount of intellectual depth and discussion goes into the decisions of poker players for each hand.

[btmagnetw]

jeez i thought you were listing out possible topics at first. whats the logical flow of that outline?

[jjshabado]

[ QUOTE ]
jeez i thought you were listing out possible topics at first. whats the logical flow of that outline?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh wow, I missed that too. You have WAY too much stuff to cover in 15 minutes.