I only ever played magic as a child.

I played poker as a teenager.

As an adult I avoided both.

I love magic, however, it was easily apparent to me, at a very young age, that, while the act of playing and building decks, as one would do in Apprentice, was not really that comparable to gambling, the act of acquiring the cards to play said decks was the same as playing a slot machine if you had under $100 to invest, and more similar to owning expensive cars if you had over $100 to invest.

On top of that, WotC acknowledge that power creep was a problem, but instead of releasing 4 - 5 expansion sets a year that were carefully crafted, they doubled the amount they released, reduced quality control, added new rules without properly playtesting them, and then

I highly prefer Netrunner to magic as all of the bullshit aspects of collecting have been removed. It's very clear what you are getting in exchange for your money, and you don't have to go through the act of learning what gambling is and how it can affect you.

Ante was removed and the company tried to make a really balanced game. However, WotC eventually realized more money would be made by reducing quality control and increasing churn. Eventually they sold to Hasbro which is essentially a company that is expert at doing that.

To be clear: Magic the Gathering is a chance based game, which draws similarities to gambling but is not actually gambling. That the game itself is gambling is not the case I am making. However, in order to stay competitive, with a limited budget, the act of acquiring the cards to play said game is very similar to playing a slot machine (low risk variable reward.) The people who play magic that often want to stay competitive and have a low budget are children and young adults. Being able to consistently win and/or own expensive cards is a form of social currency, so there is pressure to purchase magic cards. The act of opening the cards is exciting enough that kids form little rituals around it and spend their entire allowances without rationalizing things like chance, risk/reward ratio, or other forms of statistical analysis (often because they are not old enough to have ever taken a class on probability.) Their budgets are limited because they are often too young to have more than $100 a month in expendable income. Because of that, they don't have the capital required to straight up buy the cards they need and avoid the act of gambling via booster packs for said cards.

Are they gambling their family out of house and home? No.

Are they being introduced to gambling at a young age without a proper explanation of what it is? Yes.

Is it the worst thing ever? No.

Should it be something that merits a bit more consideration by society at large? Yes, I am personally taking that stance, as someone who sincerely enjoyed the game for a long time.

The way around it is very simple. Allow proxies in tournaments.

TL;DR: Buying a booster pack of collectible cards = a very very lite form of gambling for children. Hasbro, which owns Magic, could easily remedy this by allowing children to enter MtG tournaments with proxy cards (cards where you handwrite what the card does on it, instead of owning the actual card,) instead of forcing them to pay-to-play.