Easy Money : Inside the Gambler's Mind

by David Spanier

forst words in the foreword... "gambling is good for you"

You must have confidence to gamble - it's always the confident civilization that goes gambling.

- there is a camaraderie among gamblers that is independent of social class.

"There is no such thing as luck, it's all mathematics"

There are three kinds of cards - good cards, bad cards, & indifferent cards. You must play them according to what they are.

deep play - playing stakes that hurt

Why? More is at stake than material gamine - namely, esteem, honor, dignity, respect - in a word status. Yet it is only symbolically at stake, no one's status is actually altered. But that is the attraction of a gamble, to lay one's public self out on the line.

The depth is thus not money in itself, but what money causes to happen.... a psychological release of emotion.

Deep play is not utilitarian. The 'play' takes up themes of death, masculinity, rage, pride, loss, beneficence, chance, and gives it a rigid order not possible in life. It expresses the thrill of risk, the despair of loss, and the pleasure of triumph.