It really depends on the gambler. You can wager high volume on in-house games like Dice, Limbo, and some other games. I mostly played Limbo to wager over 2K so far. It is pretty easy to wager on low payouts if you want. But if you keep placing bets on low payouts, you will eventually drain your balance. The only thing you will get is a wager. But I think in-house games are tempting.
I often get triggered and place max bets. Unfortunately, luck does not always go with you. If I place higher bets, I usually lose the bet. Then I continue to place big bets to recover the previous bet loss and that's how I end up getting busted.
To join wager contest, people need to have many things, not only money. Like knowledge about wager contest, risk of losing money, chance and how to win a wager contest, and how to control their bets in order to secure their inital fund and manage to finish the contest with top ranks in leaderboard.
It's not an easy task for any participants and bets are always addictive and have potentiality of emotion emerge so that the more times you bet, the higher probability that you will bet emotionally. It will be start of some bad bet decisions that are enough to drain out your initial gambling fund. Your experience is classic like what the others experienced too but it must be known by newbies in gambling and your advice means a lot to them.
I totally agree with what you're saying dude, everything should be considered as you mentioned. It's just that being included in the leaderboard ranking even in the lowest ranking is very difficult to be included in that lowest ranking.
Then how much wager amount will be required just to be included there, then it would be okay if it was just you alone but there are so many of you competing for the leaderboard ranking,
so the fight is really like entering the eye of a needle.