It could be said that gambling works as a stress reliever .Actually it works by the same fundamental principle. If you are into some problem then via gambling your attention would get diverted towards the game and it would actually help you to forget about the worries for some time. But it could not eradicate the problem completely.
So you mean to say
escapism. But how long do you think it would be just an
escapism, have you consider it as being an
addiction?
Normal for us to have these kind of reactions specially when we do already deal with big amounts and even we do say that we are playing just for fun its still for ourselves to get stressed
and got worried if we lost that one unless if you are hella of a rich guy that doesn't bother on losing money.Each person do have its own consideration when it comes on whats big amount to them.$100 might be small for some but for majority it would be big so if you do seek for entertainment ,you wont consider on using all of the amount but due to impulsive reactions along the way then most likely you would end up on the common path.
Then it's contradictory to the idea of being a
stress-relief if you would be more stressed on worrying about winning or losing. Don't get me wrong everyone wants to win, but to what extent do we consider it as
having fun?