I don't gamble unless I have control over the situation...that limits me to 1) HIGH stakes team 10 point pitch 2)LOW STAKES poker 3) Drag racing (having a 604 HP street legal car helps!) 4) STRAIGHT pool tournaments and/or individual matches, even when they're handicapped to even the odds. I USED to shoot pool 20 hours/week until straight pool all but died in the latter 90s - early 00's and won well in excess of 250 straight pool tournaments. Now my pool table hasn't seen the light of day in years. I ought to sell the damn thing but can't allow myself to as I bought it from a pool room I ruled for years and they put a plaque on this table after I won my 50th tournament way back around '91 or '92. I used to travel (from Pittston, Pa to Binghamton NY, Philly, Allentown, Plainfield NJ, Dunnellon NJ (Plainfield was the home of a female straight pool world titlist and had a number of active rooms with tournaments almost every damn night in the early/mid 90s. Haven't been there since 2007 or so and that scene unfortunately died too).... the furthest I ever drove (had 5 others with me, we took 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th & 9th and a DNP in a HUGE 2 day tournament was Baltimore. That's also the 2nd largest prize pool I ever won, just over $2700. I would had never won IF I had looked at the names of the guys I played though as that would have been in my head. I beat 3 players who played professionally, including in the semis and in the finals. Once I heard the names of who I had beaten I began shaking uncontrollably! I learned years before to NEVER look at the tournament brackets. Everything was a random draw unless they knew you and you got seeded. I was totally unknown and destroyed the #2 seed in my 1st match, meaning I was seeded NEXT TO LAST! I knew the names of a great deal of awesome players. FORTUNATELY, outside of the local guys I knew who played professionally I had no clue who these guys actually were, no clue what they looked like etc. which is likely the only reason I ever beat them. It's a mental block that cost me a great deal of wins and I never learned how to overcome it. The final way I used to gamble was arm wrestling....but as a guy who literally damn near lived in the gym as a drug free power lifter, I knew I stood a chance against all but the absolute biggest and best guys. When you peak at a tick over 5'7" and have a mouth as BIG as mine is, you make sure you stay in amazing shape both aerobically (*5-8 mile runs 2-4x/week finished by 8-12 250 yard uphill sprints) as well as with physical strength *was benching well over 425 in the early-mid 90's, continually gaining as i dedicated more and more time to weights as str8 pool tourneys became fewer and further between, exceeding 500lbs in the early 00's* as well as continuing to be a wrestling and football coach although with wrestling you were ALWAYS learning as well as teaching. Wrestling won me at least 75% of the fights I got in against guys bigger than me (in height/weight) as everyone is the same size on the ground! Thankfully I never wound up in a fight against a better wrestler!~
I once was made to go to AC right after I got married....I lost $15.00 in 5 minutes and I'm STILL pissed off over that! Gives you the sense of why I don't gamble on stuff I have zero control over.
