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In most forms of organized gambling, the odds are against you, so the behavior only has negative outcomes. In real life, this is not always the case. Lots of th

In most forms of organized gambling, the odds are against you, so the behavior only has negative outcomes. In real life, this is not always the case. Lots of the most successful people you're aware of (CEOs, VCs, actors, musicians, politicians, etc) probably took a series of pretty insane risks at some point in their life. If they had not, they would just be normal people. But they did, and they got a huge payoff. That's why risk taking is wired into many of us.

ssharp 10y ago
> In most forms of organized gambling, the odds are against you, so the behavior only has negative outcomes. I think lottery jackpot winners would disagree with that. You're only guaranteed a negative outcome in these types of games when you've iterated enough times to reach a statistical conclusion. In the meantime, short-term luck in the game's variance could earn you a lot of money or lose you far more than you'd expect. If the expected value of $1 bet in blackjack is $0.99, the return of a single hand will never be that; it would be -$1, $0, $1, $1.50, etc.