I never bet more than $20, so $20.

$20. On my birthday and when I get a raise, I buy a handful of lottery tickets.

I spent 2 years doing casino revenue audits. The amount of money the high rollers would loose in one night was disgusting, we are talking 7 figures.

What blows my mind the most is how the math works out in the long run. A $1 slot machine could have a $100,000 prize but you would have to play it 200,000 time to hit the jack pot. You don’t play against the house, you just give them your money.

I set a $ limit. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

$100.

Real life money? 0

Video game money? Highest was ~1e57 (Balatro)

$3. Lived in Reno for decades. Would take a buck and go play the penny slots to get free drinks and get plastered with buddies.

$20

That was my absolute limit to waste on gambling, the very few times I went to a casino. In 2000 I went to a “riverboat” casino in Lawerenceburg, IN to play slots and ended up winning $250. Which put me at a net positive for all the gambling I’ve ever done.

That was the last time I ever walked into a casino.

Does my 401k count?

I’ve been to casinos twice, and hosted countless $10 buy-in hold 'em games at my place years ago.

On the poker games I definitely lost out more often than winning anything. But had good times.

Went to Vegas once for a 311 concert a little over 10 years ago, and obviously went to a casino where I stayed, because I’m east coast, so I go on my farthest trip from home ever to the gambling capital of the world, of course you go to the casino.

Would have loved to try some Hold 'Em there, but never saw any table games at all running. The only thing I saw happening at all was slot machines.

Do I brought $50 cash with me one day and left my wallet in the room. Lasted for hours, but lost it all eventually. Which is what I assumed would happen, and why I didn’t bring my wallet with me.

A couple years later the group that went on that trip was going to a casino somewhere within about 5 hours from here. Can’t remember where exactly. Not Atlantic City, but somewhere on this side of the country.

Anyway, actually won about $125-150 or so. Bought fast food dinner for the group with it, kept about $40 or so.

So given that I had a good time, I’d say I came out ahead.

£20.

I was in Chess Club at school (I know, I know, quite the jock!). We played chess. Then we got bored of chess and played backgammon. And backgammon without a bet is dull, so we started gambling. Then gambling became the point of playing. Then we moved on to poker.

I remember one poker hand. The deck was made up of about five different packs of cards. Jokers, black twos, one-eyed jacks, bedside queens, and suicide kings were all wild. I ended up with a hand of five aces. Two were real aces, three were wild cards. I had to raise. I mean, how can you not raise with five aces? What is the point of playing poker if you don’t raise with five aces?

Sadly, two other people also had five aces and one of them had three real aces and only two wild cards so they won the hand.

I lost £20 on that single hand and hated every single moment of playing it because somehow I knew, deep down, that I was going to lose. This was in the mid-1980s, and that was a lot of money for me back then and there were other, far better things I could have dropped it on - LPs were about £5 back then, video games £10 (or £2 for a budget game).

But, it was a great early lesson on the ‘gotta keep going’ mindset of the gambler combined with the certainty that I was going to lose my money. I’m glad it happened, despite the short term remorse I felt immediately afterwards.

40€
It was a poker tournament with friends, 10€ buy-in.
I got drunk and bought in another 3 times, then lost it again from making dumb drunk bets.

I never gamble with serious money cause I know how it would end. I’m susceptible to addictions.

0

Say a hundred bucks? I sincerely hate losing money, so if I gamble, it’s always with a very limited amount of money, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Well, I’ve never gambled for money. But I did once bank the next few rounds of a major boss battle on a called shot to the villain’s arm to try and disable his most dangerous attack.

I missed, and the cleric was pretty mad that I wasted an attack and got slapped into a wall by a demigod for it.

DH Texas Hold 'Em Poker.

If you don’t know what it is, it’s a shitty poker app on the app store. They are very generous with how many chips they give you whether it is for free or paying $1 or $2. We’re talking millions of chips, including bonuses like they have a wheel you can spin with tokens and have rewards.

The problem with it, is that it is filled to the brim with scammers. I’m not generalizing here, but a lot of them are foreign scammers, along with bots who join up tables even including upper stakes ones. They usually will go All-In almost all of the time and will somehow beat your hand with a petty two pair. Now the scammers are people who could be at any table and they’ll spam messages about trying to reach out to them through WhatsApp or somewhere else. They’ll want real money in exchange for giving you trillions of chips, its obvious that it is a scam but it doesn’t lessen the nuisance factor on top of the bullshit rigging.

So, this game is very devious to get into and is a clear example of gambling in a nutshell. I forgot how much money I threw down into the game.