I strongly feel that making gambling a hobby is not too fine because it could easily become addiction when made a hobby. One of my ways of handling losses is to stay away for some times, assuming I made gambling a hobby, there is no way it would have be easy for me to stay away for sometimes. Today I played some rounds in gates of Olympus and I made some decent wins before I entered series of losses which made me take a break. This flexility will not be possible if gambling was a hobby
Any hobby is an addiction (otherwise why would a person voluntarily engage in it?) and can become a severe form of addiction that will negatively affect a person. For example, computer games and collecting in them. I work in this field and I see with my own eyes how people pay a lot of money to own virtual items. And to be honest, this even affects me - I’m starting to value some virtual things more than money. So you need to understand that any activity can be dangerous if it turns into a severe form of addiction, and gambling is not much different from other activities.