How betting turned our life into a nightmare?

After a long wait, the Indian government approved the sports betting platform, and here is an example of what happened after that.

Mr. X is one of my friends at school is a good student but having bad childhood due to his father and he doesn’t have a mother. His father is not a bad guy but he is so strict that things feel like I am into the army station once I go to his house. X had the wealth to lead a decent life because of his father’s earning. Mr. X will be beaten by his father even when I was around and he is 16-17 by that time.
Due to some reason, he stopped living for his father after 15 and started being a bad student. I am not sure what incident exactly made him a bad student and he could not make even 70% in his final examination (In India it is a bad score). His father was treating him badly but did his duty of joining him in a decent College (Electrical engineering). I am not sure if X is happy with that. I could not ask him because I know he got no other option rather than to proceed.

Lose of his Father:
His father had a heart attack when he is 19 and he suddenly passed away leaving him around 1.5 crores worth of property with around 30 Lakh of cash in liquid and the rest of the property as real estate. This allowed him to make him spread his wings. I never personally saw him sad after his father’s death. He has no parents now and he was studying along with me having cash to spend around.

Begining of betting:
During 2012-2013, we don’t have active social media adventures like today. We were friends going around to movies occasionally and play games on the computer to pass time. There is an MLM company going around the college. The concept is you join the company by paying some fee and if you make others join the network, you will earn more money. He joined them as the fees were around 20,000 rupees. I could not join them as I could not afford that amount. They had regular events and coffee shop meet to make others join them. Even though it’s a scam, everyone who is involved will accept and join them anyways as it can make them rich quickly. The world has seen many make rich schemes and MLM was one among them for many years now. After 1-2 months of joining them, X could get some friends playing gambling with IPL. Since he interested in cricket similar to the usual Indian kid, he tried that and made 6,000 rupees in a weekend predicting 6 out of his 8 predictions.

Online Gambling:
His habit of MLM and gambling created a space in our friendship. He made continuous losses betting for CSK many times against Mumbai Indians and lost around 20,000 rupees and we almost completed the college and he could have lost around 1-2 Lakhs in betting (Maybe more). Around 2015-2016, online gambling platforms begin to start, they are not legal but platforms like Dream 11 started to get more spotlight creating doubts about Online gambling some positivity. We joined different companies via campus placements and we had very little time on the phone. He started playing in dream 11, thinking of winning crores and settling in life, even I tried with 2-3 thousand and I stopped. He lost around 15-20 thousand in the 2017 season and he stopped playing dream 11 as he lost hope.

Fake Gambling website:
He started playing gambling websites betting in few thousand. And he won in lakhs few times and lost in lakhs. There is always something new coming up for losing money. Different things do the same action again and again. On these platforms, you can double your money if you predict if batsmen will score above 30 or not. Whether a team will score above 160 or not. It looked really easy to predict and win but I never really saw him making money. He started losing in a few lakhs. He started taking loans for playing and lost around 10 Lakhs to date. He still believes in those things and continues to do gambling in different ways to make money quickly.

Moral:
Do not believe in making rich quick schemes, they change in different forms but only 2% of them succeed in all these schemes. 98% of them will lose money and be quiet about it. I am ready to write about those instances for creating awareness to the public.