To begin this post, I must clarify that this is not a manual on how to get luck and I must also say that I am not a person who plays the lottery, nor do I go to bingo and make bets. It is not in my nature to do so. However, I must admit that most Venezuelans have a natural passion for gambling. I have seen how many do it out of illusion, others out of addiction, habit and even for fun, even though they know that the chances of winning are 1 in a million; that is: scarce. That's what I want to talk to you about today.

I remember that when I was a child, at home there was the custom of buying a newspaper of national circulation called Meridiano, which brought a caricature, "Panchita", where people could decipher the numbers that would appear in the lottery. Venezuelans spent hours trying to unravel the winning numbers in the curves and strokes of that female cartoon. In the same way, they made numerical pyramids, which at the end threw the possible winning numbers not only of a day but of the whole week. I've never seen so much interest in numbers and mathematics in my home.

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I also remember the voice of a man named Aly Khan, Virgilio Decán, who was a famous equestrian narrator, internationally recognized, and who was in charge of describing the horse races in Venezuela. Betting on horse races, buying horse gazettes, "sealing pictures" every weekend, was the custom of most Venezuelan men, who attended spaces designed for betting, or simply sat in front of their televisions waiting for the winning horses. At that time, my father drank his beers and always ended up telling about the great feat of Venezuelan hipism, which took place on May 1, 1971 at the Churchill Downs racetrack in Kentucky, United States, and which featured the Cannonero horse, the fastest horse in the world, Dad said proudly.

In the same way, I remember the moments when I was going on a trip to some states of the country and the family sincerely asked me to bring them a "Kino", which was a lottery that was drawn weekly and had great and numerous prizes . The family was happy when I bought the Kino in the most awarded states, because they had a better chance of winning. I once gave a Kino to each of my friends for Christmas, and at least 2 of them won. I remember that my dad told me that I had given my friends luck and that that luck would never come back to me.

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Gambling is a deep-rooted custom in Venezuela. So much so that there came a time when the most abundant thing in the country was lottery sales, which were kept day and night full of people making their bets. In more recent times, the famous "little animals," a kind of lottery of animals, not of numbers, became the pastime of the people, who saw in this game, a way to get quick money and cash, at least to forget for a moment the economic predicament we are going through. Apparently, despite the country's bad situation, Venezuelans see gambling as a way to escape the serious crisis.

Many studies say that in times of crisis, societies feed on illusions and, apparently, gambling has the capacity to generate hope. It is even believed that people who have never been fanatics of gambling, may come to bet small amounts of money, with the expectation of winning and alleviating or solving economic problems. Apparently, in times of economic downturn, people do not believe that with effort and work can change the situation, so they seek to earn money fast and easy in this type of games. In the end, people are buying hope.

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Other studies talk about how ignorance is the cause of this type of addiction and how you are more likely to die run over by a car than to win the lottery. These studies consider that our ignorance makes us easy prey of the manipulation of the big lotteries or games of chance. As there is more money to be earned from the ignorant than from the educated, and cheating the people by offering them hope is one of the few industries still maintained in many countries.

According to John Dewey: "Luck, good or bad, will always be with us. But luck has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid. From these studies, we should think about how much ignorance there is in our people, but also how much hope. If we spend a certain amount of money in the hope of winning big, it is an inexpensive way of maintaining optimism and looking to the future. But if, on the other hand, our addiction to gambling is the product of our backwardness and ineptitude, we as a country will pay a high price by leaving our entire future in the hands of fate and fortune.

I hope you have been interested in this topic. I remind you that you can vote for Hive account@adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until the next smile and good luck . ;)