Gambled on land and lost: A cautionary tale

I feel like a complete idiot and am beyond frustrated with myself.

I’ve been playing @splinterlands since August now and have been thoroughly enjoying the game. It was my first look into the world of crypto, NFTs, and all of that good stuff and I very quickly became hooked.

I started out with a spell book, worked out how to buy DEC and started to build my card collection. I picked up the game quickly and watched a lot of great content on youtube from players such as @infidel1258 aka Dwayne Cunningham, Luke Plays To Earn, and others.

I also read a lot of great posts from the @splinterlands team on SplinterTalk and got excited by the prospect of buying some land. And so I did. I bought a couple of land plots for around $400 each and was sitting on them waiting for the future developments and enjoying the SPS airdrops.

Over the last couple of months I found myself diving deeper and deeper into the world of Hive and discovered two new things to me. Ragnarok and Hive Slot Games.

Now at this point I should tell you that I’ve always been a gamer and gambler and gambling is something that I struggle with. I enjoy it too much (for a while at least) and don’t know when to stop. I therefore put restrictions in place to stop me doing this in the “normal” online world, and these generally work pretty well for me. They stop me from depositing more than I can afford to lose and if I feel like I’m gambling too much then I can take a time out or ban myself from casinos.

So this week things haven’t gone so well.

Firstly I recently discovered Hive Slot Games and had a little look at it. It looked pretty basic but there were some classic casino games which I enjoy so I thought it might be some fun. However I didn’t have any spare Hive so thought it was best to leave it alone.

I then read up about Ragnarok. Ragnarok is a new game coming out that plans to be a strategy game, mixing concepts from chess and poker. Two games I enjoy.
The game hasn’t been released yet but there will be an airdrop snapshot tomorrow (6th Jan 2022) for all holders of Hive. Hive holders will then have the chance to claim these new nfts for future game use or to sell on.

Now I didn’t have very much Hive as it was all tied up in my Splinterlands land plots but because this airdrop was happening this week and because land wasn’t coming out for a while in Splinterlands I thought that I could sell my plots, get the airdrops and buy the land back at a later date. This was true gambler thinking and in hindsight, very clearly flawed.

Having sold my land plots and transferred my Swap Hive back into Hive I thought I'd have a little go on this new casino site to win back the transfer fees and to try and maximise my Hive holdings for the airdrop snapshot.

Well, we all know what happened next. Over the next few hours I slowly lost all of my Hive playing roulette, poker and blackjack and some really basic slots.

WHAT AN IDIOT!

So now I have no Hive and no land plots. FFS!

As I titled this post, this is a cautionary tale not a pity me tale.

I wasn’t sure if I should share my story because I feel so stupid but I decided I would in case it can help anyone else. Or in case it can encourage Hive Slot Games to make positive changes.

I’ve emailed Hive Slot Games and have yet to hear back from them regarding adding some safer gambling tools to their site.

I fully accept that the decisions I made were entirely my own and I do not blame Hive Slot Games for my losses. In the grand scheme of things this isn’t the end of my world and annoyingly I’ve been in similar positions many times before. However it is a significant loss to me and it does and will impact me.

I hope that this tale will help you to avoid making similar mistakes. I certainly won’t be making the same mistakes again.

Thanks for reading - supersamio