Amazing Variety
A professional gambler might strut around the exclusive European gambling clubs, or live in a basement and play poker online. In Ambergris Caye (Belize), Austin (Texas), and Greeley (Colorado) they play Chicken Poop Bingo, a popular game where the crowd gathers in a barn, and the winner of the pot gets to clean up the floor at the end.
In the world, an infinite number of propositions can be wagered on. There are many different ways to be a professional gambler. One thing a lot of self-employed gamblers have in common is being addicted to it.
There are no professional heroin addicts. In fact, in that line of work, nobody trusts a dealer who gets high on his own supply. They can never make a living off his habit, whereas there apparently are professional gamblers who manage to stay in business for decades, and become legendary.
Gambling addicts. Opiate addicts. There are so many ways to weigh addiction and apportion blame, and let’s face it, the general public will never respect a gutter-splashed junkie in the same way they do a dapper French-speaking card shark in a tailored suit. In any contemplation of gambling, one difficulty is that it covers so much ground — with most of that territory unknown, unrealized, unacknowledged, and unrecognized…
There are a lot of different ways to be a gambler, and consequently there must be some distinctly different mindsets among the people who live that life. And what does a gambling addict have in common with a guzzler of codeine cough syrup? For the psychologist specializing in addiction, the field must be endlessly fascinating, because how could one answer, or even one set of answers, account for all that variety?
Some habits of thought become so ingrained, we do not even bother to categorize or name them. For instance, a person might have a more-than-typical interest in making sure that loose ends are accounted for. They endorse the policy “measure twice, cut once” because they do not like to waste either time or materials. They would rather take the extra moment to double-check the needed footage of hose before cutting it than wind up making another trip to the hardware store to buy another length of hose and start over again.
Someone with that mindset will be quickly called out by family and friends, and classified in their minds as picky, fussy, particular, anal-retentive, or reacting like an old lady. If they had to choose an adjective, they might even characterize that person as “paranoid.” But in theis own estimation, that notion never even arises. They are just cautious, and do not care to gamble.
Then on the other hand, an enormous amount of intensely private gambling is done, that no one ever thinks about in that context, not even the person who is doing it. For instance, a mundane activity that millions of people engage in every day involves a terrific lot of odds-reckoning, and sometimes the risk of a catastrophic penalty for being wrong — and that fraught activity is driving a motor vehicle.
Just to get out on the road is to take a chance, because at the end of the day, you could wind up sandwiched between an 18-wheeler and a concrete abutment. Worse yet, all this applies even to drivers who do not look for or enjoy opportunities to take chances.
Another sort of vehicle operator really digs facing up to an exciting challenge on the road, and has fun with it. They gamble against other drivers, or even against themselves, no matter how juvenile or stupid that might be, because “Riski” is their middle name.
This is the kind of heedless driver who sometimes winds up dead, and sometimes takes other people along for the ride to eternity, as long as there is a cheap thrill involved. That potentially fatal game stems from the same basic impulse as shooting craps, a harmless diversion that might use up the rest of a lunch break after the sandwich.
Another type of gamble, undertaken all too often by young and/or just plain careless people, involves contraceptives (or their absence), and may result in not an accidental death, but an unplanned life. Throughout history, unscheduled and even unwanted human lives have sprung forth and managed to fulfill the momentous phrase “changed the world.” That life — created in an instant, by a choice as uncomplicated as a coin flip, might three or four decades later result in one entire country being absorbed by another, or cause half a planet to disappear in a nuclear event.
So the concept of gambling covers a lot of ground.
Written by Pat Hartman. First published July 18, 2025.
