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[dilanesp]

The reality is that beyond the true compulsive gamblers (who obviously need to get out of whatever games they are betting) there are a lot of ostensibly sensible and intelligent bettors who nonetheless can have compulsive tendencies. These exist in every game where there is advantage play. There are poker players who play too many hands (and online players who play too many tables) or play too high stakes, there are sports bettors who bet too many games, there are stock traders who make too many trades, etc.

And obviously making it super-easy to bet a far greater number of races is going to bring out that tendency in horseplayers. People are going to bet tracks they don't follow or know very well, bet races they don't really have a strong edge in, and just bet too many races overall.

One of the big reasons it is very hard to win money in any form of advantage gambling is because one of the reasons people are attracted to gambling in the first place- and again, not only the true problem gamblers- is the action.

And further, it's also human nature to want to have expert opinions on lots of things that we aren't qualified to have expert opinions on. A great example of that phenomenon is all the people who moved over from sports betting to political punditry (some of whom moved over again to become epidemiologists this year). The tendency is to think that you have an expert opinion on any race you look at.

At bottom unless you are very lucky or have connections, it's very hard to succeed at anything worthwhile in life without a lot of discipline. Which means knowing what you don't know and having enormous patience. In poker, that means sitting at a table and just folding over and over again if all you are getting is crap cards in bad situations. And in horse racing, it means not betting stuff where you don't have any edge.