In this article, I will try to break down what I believe is part of the answer to this question.
There are many professional gambers in the world today who make a living betting sports, playing poker, speculating on the stock market or trading cryptocurrency. Yes, in a very similar way these last 2 groups are gamblers too. In order to understand what makes them so successful, I believe we need to take a look into the fundamentals on how the brain works and what differentiates them from the average Joe in this regard.
Primitive vs Advanced Regions of the Brain
When taking a look at the physical structure of the brain, we see that it is build up in layers that represent stages of our evolutionary biology. As a result of this, the basic functions are located closer to the center of the brain and the more recently evolved functions are located in the outer layer. The older parts can be seen as your more emotional subconscious side which often gets referred to in psychology as "the inner child", while the more advanced part can be seen as your rational conscious part. The perfect example that everyone who has ever gambled will understand is going on Tilt or starting to steam / chase losses, this is merely the result of the primitive emotional part taking over 100% of the decision power for a moment usually ending with devastating results. Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) in a similar way is very relatable to people in the cryptocurrency world.
Most Humans Think Binary
Every concept in the brain is stored along with a certain emotion and for most people these emotions work in a very binary way. 1 or 0, good or bad, right or wrong, win or lose, trust or distrust,... The reason it works this way is because it was beneficial for our survival in the past as it conserves energy and speeds up the simple decision making which keeps you alive in moments of danger. Your brain has the capability to instead of these absolutes, emotionally store probabilities to concepts and ideas. This is what I believe every successful gambler and investor is master in, on a fundamental level they think in probabilities instead of in absolutes. Most people apply this concept in a certain degree on a rational conscious level, but it's only when you are able to do this on a emotional level that you gain a huge edge as the subconscious part is far more powerful compared to the conscious part. Look at the negative impact of fully using binary thinking (= tilt) on something that is probabilistic like gambling. Reverse things around and imagine instead of going on steam, you would go on "full probability mode" and it's not difficult to see the positive impact this would have on your overall betting results.
Outcome Dependant vs Results Oriented
Most gamblers like the thrill of betting and are emotionally invested when it comes down to winning or losing a certain bet, this is what is called being outcome dependant. Expert gamblers are result oriented and don't care about the outcome of a single event, they see and approach everything from a long run angle. As a consequence they don't get much thrill from betting and are emotionally not that affected by bad beats or losses as long as they feel they made the right decision at the time of making it with the information they had. To say that they master their emotions would be wrongly put as their emotions are more in line with the probabilistic nature of gambling which makes it an easy process for them.
Examples:
Average gambler When someone who thinks birnary bets 40€ on team A @ 2.0 and wins, he will think and feel that if he won 40€, if he loses he will think and feel that he lost 40€ because emotionally he thinks binary in "win or lose".
Expert Gambler When someone who thinks in probability bets 1.000€ on team A @ 2.0 and wins he will think and feel that he won about 40€ (if he believes the team had about 52% chance), if he loses he doesn't think and feel like having lost 1.000€ but an amount more close to what he evaluates the expected outcome probabilities were. In this way he can feel good about a losing a bet or feel even bad when winning a bet.
TED Talk Dylan Evans "What Can We Learn From Expert Gamblers ?"
A 15 minute Ted talk worth watching when you are interested to learn more about this.
[This article is mainly written for entertainment purpose and as an idea to think about. It does not claim to be fully scientifically correct in any way! ]
Let me know your thoughts and opinions in the comments...
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