It is easy to think that it is difficult for those of us who do not bet to enter the mentality of those who do. We imagine smoke-filled rooms where fortunes can be won or lost the instant it takes a dealer to move his wrist. To most of us that seems terribly strange. But in reality, we all play in everyday situations where the stakes are much higher than the turn of a card.

We could take a new job somewhere, move house, or run a red light. We delude ourselves that these are rational choices, but in many ways we are subject to the vagaries of fate that are much more complicated than those of a simple game of chance like poker or bingo. Our new job could make us work with people we don’t like. We could be out of depth in a new environment. Perhaps the reasonable manager of the interview will turn out to be an ogre who he really works for. The company could go bankrupt within weeks of joining us. None of these things are quantifiable, and yet they can have far more damaging effects on our lives than simply dropping $ 50 on a hand of cards.

Those we define as “players” are typically those who play a game of quantifiable odds for a given outcome. We delude ourselves that our own lives do not contain great elements of play.

Where the urge to gamble in this scenario becomes problematic is that goals that seem so clear at first can quickly overcome your situation. You enter a game with $ 200 – and before you know it you may be $ 500 down. Confirmation bias means that we are likely to waste good money after bad to try to “get back” to a winning situation.

Most game situations are also ‘zero sum’. If 5 players sit at the table with $ 2000 between them, 4 of them collectively lose most, and probably all, of their share. Most real life situations do not have the same total loss certainty. The horrible job could be offset by a good salary. The terrible boss might actually goad us to prove him wrong. If the business as a whole prospers, everyone gains more of the new wealth without loss.

Perhaps that is the biggest difference between “playing” in the sense of playing and gambling with life. The games take place on a short, compressed timescale and you know your fate could be sealed in a matter of hours. In most situations in life, events unfold at a much slower pace. So leisurely, in fact, that we may not even realize the results that are happening. Unhappiness can arise so slowly that we may not recognize it for years.

In contrast, a bet in the gambling sense compresses that sequence of events into a few moments. That compressed surge of danger heightens the senses, heightens our awareness of what is at stake, and triggers a complex set of emotional and physiological responses that can be very, very compelling.

And that’s why we bet.