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Dave & Buster’s, long the hangout for teens & tweens with a cacophony of animated and real world games for kids is replacing them with … gambling for adults.

In the article, which I hope you can see (Bloomberg is finicky about this sort of thing; this is an attempt to end run via an Apple News link) they are replacing those games with new games, on which you can gamble. The idea is that “games of chance” are outlawed in most places, but “games of skill” are not. So betting on the outcome of an NBA game is “chance” (even though many would argue it takes skill), but, say “playing pool” demonstrates a skill, so you can bet on it.

Gambling invades everything these days, I guess.

https://apple.news/AZIKnJerQRxuSP80orbpuZg

 Somewhere out there, a Skee-Ball shark lies in wait to lighten your wallet. 
A Dance Dance Revolution hustler plots your downfall. A bumper-pool savant, a 
budding Tom Cruise in his own version of The Color of Money, prepares to 
barnstorm through pool halls, raking in cash from hapless opponents. These 
fantasies and more will soon be alive at your local Dave & Buster’s, the 
$2 billion eatertainment chain that recently announced plans to let patrons 
place real-money bets on the company’s main attraction: its arcade games.

The suburban gaming den’s new betting operation is part of a partnership with 
Lucra Sports, a technology company that describes its product as 
“gamification services.” In practical terms, Lucra licenses its software 
to other businesses, allowing them to integrate certain kinds of betting 
into their existing apps and websites. Lucra deals in the kinds of bookie-free 
“peer to peer” bets—say, on the results of a night of bowling or a game of 
pickup basketball—that might have previously been sealed with a handshake.

At Dave & Buster’s, the betting will happen within its app-based loyalty 
program, where, in addition to offers for all-you-can-eat wings and 
half-price mozzarella sticks, it will join a relatively new and 
extraordinarily convoluted “rewards sportsbook,” which currently allows 
patrons to place bets on pro sports by converting tickets they win in 
the arcade into a series of tokens that can eventually be cashed out for more tickets. 

I've eaten out too often in my life. For a long time it was probably at least 300 times, if not 400+ in a year. Sadly in my 20s/30s it was frequently fast food. Even though I've never worked in a restaurant/bar, my countless hours of being in them and talking to employees certainly gives me some knowledge. There are restaurants that I honestly have no idea how they stay in business. The quality of food you get for the price you pay just doesn't make sense to me. Places like TGI Fridays, Applebees, etc. Sometimes some places stay in business just because people get into a habit of going there and don't seem to want to do something different (inertia).

I've been in Dave and Busters a handful of times. Never by my choice. The food is ok at best, not cheap, and the place is frequently quite loud.

I heard guys on a sports show talk about the "sportsbook/rewards" thing and they were quite confused as to how it would work.

I'm far from anti-gambling and in my 30s I often visited Vegas but the sports gambling especially has gotten out of control. For a while when I would watch a baseball game they would display odds on various bets/parlays for players in the game. I have not seen it much this season and wonder if someone associated with the team decided it was too much and had it toned down, or whether the sponsor decided it wasn't worth the money.

I'm surprised they have not started doing things like food eating contests, if you eat x in y seconds you get it half off, etc. Then other customers can wager as well.

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