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Pathological Gambler or Compulsive Gambler?

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Pathological Gambler or a Compulsive Gambler

"Dave" Wing Kit Chu, 32, will go to jail for a long time for stealing �9 million to gamble with on the spread betting.

Questions have been asked about the City Boys Gambling Spree

Jo the blogger from UK Gambling.net wrote

What I'm still wondering is how he got access to his colleague's passwords and more importantly, how this went undetected for 5 years - it seems sheer negligence on the part of the company

Wagering War Blog ain't amused either. Wagering War points out the City boys possibly are'nt as smart as they think they are.
Suddenly the monumental screw-ups blighting our endowment policy and pension industries don't seem quite so inexplicable; merely a few more verses in a litany of incompetence on the part of our nation's financial 'suits', who for all their Porsches and hols in the Maldives aren't perhaps so much more clever than the rest of us, after all.

Pathological Gambler or a Compulsive Gambler?

Was "Dave" Wing Kit Chu, 32, a Pathological Gambler or a Compulsive Gambler?
His lawyer Caroline English urged the judge to seek psychiatric reports before Wing's 'virtually inevitable' jail term.

'Bearing in mind the magnitude of the monies taken and the frequency of the transactions, it is clear this man's actions were completely out of control,' she said. Ms English called for an exploration of whether Wing suffered from what she called 'pathological gambling'.

Judge James Wadsworth QC refused by
ordering standard pre-sentence reports. 'I am satisfied on reading the papers that this is a man with a gambling compulsion,' he said. 'The court does require a pre-sentence report, but I make it plain to you that a custodial sentence is "virtually inevitable."

I can't automatically buy that so I look for some definitions of pathological and compulsive gambling in my little collection.
Compulsive Gambling
The term most commonly used by the public to describe someone with a gambling disorder, but generally rejected by the therapeutic community in favor of pathological gambling. The term disordered gambling is also sometimes used.

Pathological Gambling
A chronic inability to resist the impulse to gamble. The term is usually limited to cases where the gambling causes serious damage to a person's social, vocational, or financial life. Often referred to as compulsive gambling and less frequently as disordered gambling, it is considered by most to be an impulse control disorder. It is not synonymous with problem gambling


An Illinois Gambling Addiction Q and A reckon "Biological findings from a recent study indicate that pathological gambling is an addiction similar to chemical addiction."

Was David Wing Kit Chu a pathological gambler or a compulsive gambler? There is not much of a difference judging by the various definitions. The real difference is the difference between a 5 year prison sentence or possibly treatment as an outpatient in the Farnham General.

Seems to me Judge James Wadsworth QC has decided the outcome before reading the pre sentencing reports. Personally I would want to know whether the guy is a pathological gambler or an impulsive gambler before I make up my mind.

If "Dave" really was a "wide boy", a flash city type in a suit just giving it the large, he needs to be banged up I suppose.

If "Dave" has a medical condition he needs treatment like any other unwell person. I don't care how much money he gambled away.

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