There are two types of pain to deal with when gambling and losing.
1. The first one is the money you risk and lose.
2. When the money you almost win is very big.
Now ask yourself which one makes you feel pain even more? On my own part, losing what I risked is very easy for me, it is still money but it is the type that I can afford to lose.
How much damage can $3 do to someone who makes some hundreds of dollars per month? I can only feel the pain if the amount I almost successfully grabbed is very big.
Normally it is a bit more tricky to win large amount with small amount of money, but we move, how about you?
It's absolutely mediocre to think this way; it's a lack of understanding of the concept of winning... or losing.
Get rid of that phrase that's ingrained in most players: "money I can afford to lose."
Change it to:
"money I can afford to make profitable."
Isn't $3 a significant loss? Let's say, for example, that playing around 100,000 hands at the cash tables (or Dice, e.g. , etc.) isn't a small amount, but it is the average for some players. But when we're talking about volume, a loss of $3 every 100 hands is a lot of money at the end of the month.
Then, when you understand that, it's not about losing $1,000 meaning a lot and $3 meaning nothing; it's relative.