The game revolves around luck, but the illusion of control is addictive. We start to think that we can “master chance,” as if it were possible to train ourselves to flip a coin. We have this tendency to look for patterns even when they don’t exist, because uncertainty bothers us, and then strategies, “infallible” methods, betting gurus emerge…
Maybe that’s what makes us keep betting. It would be really boring to sit around and just “press the button” to spin the reels of the slot machine, the roulette wheel, etc. We need to believe that we’re in control.
Oh, yeah! This illusion of control has ruined many lives. Including mine. Many years ago, I thought that everyone around me was a fool and that I was the only one who knew what I was doing. That I could go to a casino and win a lot of money. That I would soon become rich, but it was not to be. After some time, gambling showed me the other side of the coin. It took all the money out of my pocket and also forced me to accumulate a huge amount of debt. How wrong I was then.
And people still tend to make such mistakes. It is difficult to even imagine the consequences when this happens to a person who thinks exactly the same way as he did in his time.