Gambler’s Ruin

Posted by Jew from Jersey
24 October 2021

A compulsive gambler will not quit even when he is ahead, because to a compulsive gambler quitting is worse than losing. To walk home with the money is to walk away from the game, and the game is everything. Each win only whets his appetite for bigger wins. And each loss is only a temporary setback. With any luck he can borrow money to keep playing, win an even bigger hand, pay back his debts like they never existed, and go on to even bigger wins. At some point, his need for an outsized win becomes so desperate that even a moderate win feels like a loss, while a big win only convinces him that even bigger wins are just around the corner. So he dreams of the ultimate win, but even if gets it, he’ll just keep playing until eventually he loses so much money that no one will loan him any more. Statisticians know this certainty as “gambler’s ruin.” In practice, gambler’s ruin is not only a state of economic ruin, but of spiritual ruin as well. A man who has experienced the winning of large sums of money and prospected the winning of even larger sums will never be happy with a nine-to-five job.

This is similar to what happens to child prodigies when they grow up. It also calls to mind the Peter Principle which states that when competence is rewarded by promotion, incompetence is eventually guaranteed. Fundamentally, it goes back to Icarus. It is also what happens to women who date too much for too long, especially when they date men they know will never to commit them, especially when they lie to themselves that they’re not really seeking commitment at all, just “having fun.” When their biology will no longer loan them any more dating capital, the fun ends and they will never be happy with a guy with a nine-to-five job.

“Why the double standard?” you’re going to say, “What about men’s ruin?” The saving grace for most men is that nature never gives them much dating capital to begin with and few can even get admitted to the casino. Also, the little currency men do have tends to remain stable for much of their lives. Finally, the few men who do have a larger stake to play the tables are not prone to compulsive gambling in the same way because they aren’t depending on ever larger wins. This is because these rare men are playing the house side of the table. So they behave more like professional gamblers playing for a percentage than like compulsive gamblers counting on the win to end all wins. To them, it sort of is like a nine-to-five job.

Even the most ordinary women are prone to gambler’s ruin because whatever the extent of their sexual capital, it slowly rises from the onset of puberty for a period of approximately ten to fifteen years. During this time, they become accustomed to an ever higher average quality of male callers. The ones who marry young often regret it when they later realize they could have done better by waiting, while the ones who are still in the game feel vindicated and are buoyed by their increased prospects. This is what women mean when they say they’re “having fun” or “learning about myself,” etc.

It’s not that women’s sexual capital suddenly goes to zero at age thirty or any other point in time. Most women retain a good deal of sex appeal well into middle age and some even beyond that. But there is an inflection point at around thirty where it reaches a maximum and begins to decline. What comes as a shock to women is not a sudden loss of male attention, but a the steady decreasing average quality of the males, even if the decline is gradual. Women are then often in denial and think they can just wait out the temporary bad streak, only to see it progressively worsen. They often try to “borrow” sexual capital from non-sexual sources, such as their professional or social or intellectual or educational attainment, only to find the currency is non-convertible. By then the quality of interested men has grown poorer still, leading finally to a classic gambler’s ruin scenario.