Good read about degenerate gambling

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/the_high_is_always_the_pain_and_the_pain_is_always_the_high.php

The real pain of poker, the only chronic, threatening pain, comes from the
daily loss of livelihood—how a player views himself in the face of losing. Pain
tolerance, then, is not measured in how well the player can take a bad beat or how long he can sit at a table without questioning what the fuck has happened. Rather, it is how the player handles an inevitable losing streak and the extent to which he will allow losing to affect his idea of himself. After a month straight of losses, a player can become convinced that losing is his role. Going broke becomes his thing to do, his inevitable outcome. The fog of losing, which feels like a seething, dirty steam in the veins, seeps into everything.

That is the pain of poker that must be endured and held at arm’s length: the existential pain that causes you to turn your vision of doom into a fate-bound story, as tragic and merciless as fiction.

Hat tip: Katie