You've probably said it yourself. Maybe out loud, maybe only in your head, walking out into the night after another loss: never again. And you meant it. Then the next day came, and you were back.
That doesn't make you a liar. I watched this happen for years from behind the counter, and I lived it myself before that. Something else is going on, and it starts with anger.
The anger after a loss
Irritation and anger after yet another loss are something almost every player shares. In the small casinos where I worked, it was one of the most ordinary sights there was. Customers took it out on the other regulars, on the staff, even on the managers. And usually over nothing. There was no real reason. They just needed to explode, to let it out.
People who gamble at home do the same thing, only there's no one to shout at. Players have told me things like “I smashed my phone” or “I broke my computer screen.” The screen takes the hit instead of a person.
But the anger isn't really about the other customer, or the phone. It's about the money that's gone, and about the feeling of having been beaten again.
When emotion does the talking
And here's the problem. When emotion is talking and reason isn't, most players fall back on words that carry no weight:
- “You'll never see me again.”
- “I'm done. I'm never playing again.”
- “To hell with it. That's it.”
I heard these lines over and over, from different people, in almost the same words. Said loudly, and often in front of everyone.
Why “never again” doesn't last until tomorrow
Of course, it almost never happens in practice. The words stay just that: promises. If I had to put a number on it from my years at work, I'd say about nineteen out of twenty of the people who shouted “never again” came back. Many of them the very next day. That's my own estimate, not a study. But I watched it happen for years.
Why? Because in that moment the clear mind isn't in control. The promise is made by the angry you. But the next day, it's a different you who has to keep it.
Anger burns out fast. By the next morning it has gone, and with it the strength behind the promise. What's still there is everything that was there before: the habit, the hope, the appointment at the usual hour. (I wrote about those two in Why can't I stop gambling?) And now there's something new as well: yesterday's loss, which suddenly feels like a reason to go back and win it back.
In a way, the shout itself did its job. It let the pressure out. Once the pressure is gone, the promise has nothing left holding it up.
A good day and a bad day
This is exactly why my book insists on it, and why it carries the title it does: Written on a Good Day, for Your Bad Day. What you decide matters far less in the heat of a loss than on a calm day, when your mind is clear and nobody is shouting.
A promise shouted on a bad night is gone by morning. What you build on a good day is still standing when the bad night comes back.
Where to go from here
If you've said “never again” more times than you can count, you don't need another promise. You need a different starting point.
