I was always under the impression that gambling was a bad thing. You know, it’s like gambling is step one, prostitutes step two, and the next thing you know you’re laying in the gutter with a needle in your arm, a whore in your pants, and a bunch of dollar bills shoved in your mouth. Or some such thing. But apparently gambling is cool after all, because Christina Ricci is promoting it. I didn’t know celebrities promoted generic vices, I thought it was only specific brands for which they were paid. She’s not talking about poker or some other form of card-based gambling, but going for the old fashioned ponies.

“I’ve learned to love gambling,” Christina Ricci told PEOPLE at the grand opening party for the Palazzo Las Vegas. “I was in Australia for a few months and gambling is like a national pastime there, so I learned to love betting on horses, and now I even put in a few football bets and I’m kind of obsessed and into it. Gambling is pretty good.”

Thursday night, blackjack was her game of choice. When she wasn’t sitting on her boyfriend’s lap, Ricci was doubling down and splitting aces with Angie Harmon, her hubby Jason Seyhorn and Jerry O’ Connell.

Ricci, 27, seemed to find a way to win at Palazzo’s blackjack tables. Horse racing was another matter. “I have no strategy (with horses) and I never pick winners,” she says. “But it’s still fun.”

[From People]

I love how Christina says she “learned” to love gambling. Like how your mom made you “learn” to love spinach. Because it’s so good for you, so you better acquire a taste for it, damn it! And if you don’t learn to bet on the horses, you’re not getting any dessert for a week. Seriously, is so little going on in Christina’s life that she has to tell us about her new love of various vices? Is so little going on in my life that I have to write about it? Yes and yes apparently. I’ll see you at the track.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Christina at the Palazzo Las Vegas Grand Opening on Thursday night. Images thanks to PR Photos.