Alan, here's an example to prove my point.
What's the difference between these two scenarios. Player 1 goes to a casino and plays 10,000 hands. He wins or loses X amount of money. He's one of those folks you claim is an addict or whatever. Now we have Player 2. He goes to the casino with win and loss goals and ends up averaging around 1000 hands before hitting one of those goals. He goes to a casino 10 times. He wins or loses Y amount of money.
Is there any reason to believe that X is not equal to Y?
With a random distribution of cards why would you expect them to be different?
If you are honest you will say that there is no reason for them to be different. They have exactly the same odds of winning or losing over those 10,000 hands. All the win/loss goals did was stretch out the time that it took.
So, is this good or bad. Well, on negative machines this is probably good because Player 2 will likely gamble less than Player 1 and therefore lose less money. However, the return of both players (as a %) is exactly the same. On positive machines Player 2 will generally win less money for the exact same reasons. I'm not saying these players will always lose on negative machines or always win on positive machines. However, the chances are much greater for this to occur, and the more negative or more positive the machines, the greater the chances.
So, if you are giving advice to players then you MUST take into account the machine return. In addition, if you are honest you need to tell players that the only thing win/loss goals provide on negative machines is a chance to play less which most often means they will lose less (and there are many ways to play less). Also, the way to lose the least is to not play at all.
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