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Notes -
So I went into the Casino with the commitment to "only" risk $400 at most. That was my whole budget.
I sat down at the Blackjack Table with a $15 minimum bet size. I hit what the gambling community calls a "Hot Streak" and within like 10 minutes I'm up by $500. I pocket $400 worth of chips, Now I'm playing with house money.
After a bit longer, suddenly I'm up like $1500. I'm placing bets worth $500+ per hand. i.e. I'm betting more than the whole budget I had set out on single hands of blackjack. Its feels pretty awesome.
"Why don't you just cash in your chips and take the money?"
Well I wasn't there to make money, i was there to have fun. And its FUN to risk a whole day's salary on the turn of a card, its FUN to have the other players going hype over your success, its FUN to tip the dealer like $10/$20 at a time, its FUN to imagine somehow hitting it huge and walking out with $50k, it is FUN to have drinks delivered to you as you 'lock in' to try to keep the streak going. It is even fun to LOSE a big amount, when you still have a whole stack of chips to burn.
After, I dunno (literally, you lose track of all time), 30-45 minutes total, I force myself to take a break to 'cool off.' About then I notice my pulse racing and hands shaking. Not aggressively, just the little tremor. I've got about $600, plus the chips I stashed earlier. I stash another $400. Now my day is profitable regardless.
I wander for about an hour, then come back to the same table. It feels right. No rational reason for it, but why change? I put down my $200 in chips. And lose it all in, no joke, about 5 minutes.
Just like that.
So I leave with about $800 and one hell of a dopamine rush.
And for weeks I kept thinking back to that rush, and my brain keeps saying "holy cow remember how awesome that hot streak felt? I bet you could hit that again if you went back." My rational brain is able to quell that. "The house wins this is precisely how they get you," but neurochemicals are a helluva drug.
I could see myself doing something like that every week. Go in with $400-500, make it last as long as possible. Some days I'd lose it quick, some days I'd lose it slow, some days I'd double or triple it, and I'd be having tons of fun but it would basically be an addiction at that point, and I'm not sure I could keep myself limited to a small budget once I was hooked.
Have you ever actually gone in, and lost the whole budget quickly? I can understand that the experience of winning might override the knowledge of -EV, but thats definitionally not something that can happen most of the time.
Im especially wondering about the olde times when there was no house and its all peer-to-peer betting, where presumably the others want to stop betting as you want to keep going.
I only did this once. Been trying not to tempt fate.
But I expect that going in and losing quickly would piss me off and make me want to plunk down more money to "win it back" so I don't have to accept the unpleasant sensation of admitting "defeat."
Since that is about how I felt when I took losses during my brief day-trading phase.
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