I believe that even if a person has a genetic predisposition to gambling, it is not a particular problem because a person can control his actions and refrain from negative experiences.
In my opinion we choose our own destiny and what to do in life. If a gambler blames his losses on his genes, most likely he is afraid to admit his mistakes and tries to blame someone else for his mistakes.
Make sense, but IMO it's not really on the genes. It is when a child witnesses how their parents gambles regularly like it's a normal thing for them that is a part of their daily grind. It will instill in their young minds and will eventually develop into a habit and worse gambling addiction.
So, yeah it is us who chooses our fate on whether or not we engage into gambling excessively.
My parents never gambled. I grew up in a conservative household. I don't even know how to play Solitaire up until I finished college. The people around me are upstanding citizens that never got involved in the gambling industry, yet I still managed to find my way into gambling although I was never the problematic one. Environment plays a lot in the development of children and how they act in the society. But sometimes there are outliers wherein they never got introduced to something, they just managed to learn it.
^
As far as I know alcoholism can be transmitted on a genetic level as this disease affects genes, destroying them. You can easily notice it in families which have an alcoholic father in the head of the family and live in poverty. This is unlikely to happen with gambling as it only affects a person's psychology. So if you are into gambling it does not mean that your children will have the same hobbies.
So I dig further and I learnt that genes can be modify and since alcohol is a combination of different chemicals if it is abused with time, it can affect the offspring, so I take back my previous example as a case study with heredity but gambling hereditary says otherwise. Although, it can be transferred from parent to children but the percentage is quite low and again, if the child stays with the addicted parents is likely to happen than when they are taken away from them. Literally, if an addicted gambler gives birth to a child and its been taken care of by another caring parent, the chance of the child becoming a gambler will be very low.
Alcoholism leads to several
mild effects on gene expression. It doesn't completely
modify the genes; it only affects how your gene is read by your body and those are two entirely different things. Say, a gene XYZ is supposed to create a protein, ABC. Suppose the person who has this XYZ gene is constantly exposed to alcohol and cigarette smoke. Your body will then conform to these new substances and introduce subtle changes. What your body transcribes as ABC will now be transcribed as ACB. Extremely subtle, but depending on the gene, can be very dangerous.