Originally Posted by gemny

My girlfriend doesn't like me gambling. She says that it is something only disillusioned people do, and the whole point is to keep gambling until you lose. We argued about it for a while, and I finally convinced her to come with me to a casino for the first time in her life, in the hope that I could spark my interest in her. I set her off easy at the roulette with 50/50 odds on $20, and she just happened to WIN. She then looked at me with a "well now what" face, and I realized she just doesn’t get what's fun about it. I then started thinking: even though I have a lot more fun at the casino than her, in the total balance of wins VS losses, it is very likely that she has a greater chance of keeping her profits (granted she knows the game, of course) than me, simply because she is not driven by the hopes of scoring large. I asked my friends and no one seemed to have a straightforward answer to my question "is someone who hates playing actually more likely to win that someone who loves playing?"