Complete the text with the words from the box. Then press "Check" to mark your answers.
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Gambling is properly playing games of chance, such as cards, pitch-and-toss, etc., for money. But it also includes betting, which is staking money on an future event, such as a horse race. The essential feature of gambling and betting is risking money on a chance to win a larger sum.
always denounce gambling as wrong, and yet, at first sight, it is not easy to show why it is wrong. It is true that in game of chance or a bet, one of the parties must lose their money, but the gain of the other cannot be called robbery because parties willingly agree to run the risk. You might say that if two sensible men agree to risk losing their money in a game of , it is their own business, and no one has any right to interfere with them. Perhaps comparing gambling with duelling will help us see why is evil. In a duel, both parties willingly agree to run a risk in a game of chance. In gambling, they risk losing their money; a duel, the loss of their lives. But in most modern, civilised countries, duelling is a crime in the eyes of the law and is with heavy penalties. Why? If two men agree to kill each other, that is their private affair. Why should the law stop them? The answer that it is not their private affair. It is a public affair because if any citizen can take the law into his own hands and an injury himself, all law and order in the state will go to pieces. And gambling is condemned for the same reason: because the effect gambling is injurious not only to individuals but to public social life.
The evils of gambling may be summarised as follows: First, it discourages steady of the industry by holding out before men the hope of getting rich quickly and easily without work. Second, gambling frequently becomes a habit, as as a drink craving, that a man cannot break, and it frequently leads to his ruin and the misery of his dependent family. Thirdly, it an unhealthy and restless excitement in men's minds. Lastly, it often ends in theft and embezzlement, and even crimes of violence. Judged by its fruits, is, therefore, an evil.