The Book
His passion for gambling took him to the biggest, most beautiful and most fascinating casinos in the world: Monaco, Las Vegas, Macau, the Bahamas, Moscow, Sun City.
Read the gripping story of the double life of a passionate gambler who lost everything – companies, family, friends and fortune – and still won. After 35 years of pathological gambling addiction, with the help of his wife, who was suffering from cancer, and intensive gambling therapy, he finally defeated the “damned gambling virus”.
Enter the world of small and big gamblers and discover, through stories the author lived through himself, how $10 can be turned into $2.6 million – and how super-rich managers and successful entrepreneurs gambled away their entire fortunes at the roulette table in no time.
With plenty of insider information about the casino business, about how gambling addiction changes a person, what it does to their private and professional life, and the consequences a loser ultimately has to live with.
Excerpt from the foreword
Winning is usually a wonderful thing. But winning in a casino is something very special. Yes, it really is true: those are indescribably happy moments when you win in a casino and the croupier pays out your winnings and pushes them across the table to you. Losing, on the other hand, hurts – usually it hurts terribly – and has dramatic consequences for the gambler and everyone around him.
Gambling has many faces, and every game has two sides. In every profession and walk of life there are winners and losers, but in “games of chance” in particular there are almost (99 %!) only losers. […] I, too, had to learn this bitter lesson, and I bled for it for 35 years.
Bernhard F. Hödl · Last Game
What to expect
The endless fight against the virus – and how $10 became $2,600,000 in no time.
A diamond dealer, a hotelier, a gold wholesaler, a ship’s captain: eight fates at the roulette table – and how they ended.
Lasting impressions from the largest casinos in the world.
A father liable for gambling debts, numbers games, addiction transfer, the double life, tough gambling therapy and the double burden of gambling and alcohol addiction.
The Author
For 35 years, gambling was his life. Today he is free of gambling – and talks about it openly.
Bernhard F. Hödl lives in Wundschuh in Styria, Austria. As an entrepreneur and passionate gambler, he experienced casinos all over the world – the wins, the even bigger losses and the price that family and friends pay for them. With Last Game he wants to warn, inform and give hope: the last game is not the end.
FIA – Forever abstinent.
Contact
Questions about the book or a personal message for Bernhard F. Hödl?
Help with gambling addiction
If you yourself or someone close to you can no longer break free from gambling: help is confidential and usually free of charge.
