As a child, I heard a remark that has stayed with me: ‘Gambling is a luxury; only those who can afford it should gamble.’ I remember those words not as an invitation to gamble, but as a boundary. What we need to live comes first. Only after that, if at all, comes what we can afford to lose.
Playing for small amounts of money was part of my life from a very young age, around twelve: table football, tressette, calabrisella, then poker and football betting. I am recounting that experience, not offering it as an initiation to be repeated. Today, I would not advise a child to learn to have fun by putting money at risk. Nor do I treat different games as though they were the same: skill can play a part in a game between people; it cannot control a random draw.
Over time, I changed games and tried to risk little, keeping that remark as a point of reference. I have no formula to give other people that would make them immune to addiction. I have my own experience, some images I cannot forget and a conviction: gambling should never be given the task of solving life's problems.
An Evening with a Price, Not a Promise
When I choose to sit down at a table, I think of the evening a little like a meal out. I decide beforehand how much I am prepared to spend. If I lose that amount, my evening of gambling is over. I may have chatted, laughed, thought through a hand and enjoyed the company. I do not expect my wallet to certify the value of every hour spent with other people.
Saying ‘I've run out of money’ at that point means, above all, that I have used up the money set aside for this. I do not want to argue with the limit I set when I was feeling calm. I do not want to turn it into a provisional promise, open to revision as soon as losing starts to hurt. The next sum would no longer be the price of the evening I had chosen: it would be the price of refusing to accept its outcome.
The comparison with a meal, however, has an important limit. A restaurant bill does not invite me to pay for another dinner to recover the cost of the first. Gambling can suggest precisely that: stay a little longer; the next hand will put everything right. That is why a budget is a precaution, not a certificate of safety. In my view, it must also account for the longer term: a small amount spent over and over can become an expense we never really decided to take on.
Money I have lost does not become a debt that gambling is obliged to repay me. If I chase it, I am entrusting more money to the same uncertainty that brought me to this point. For me, leaving an evening out of pocket and still considering it enjoyable means exactly this: I do not have to win to give myself permission to get up and leave.
The Children's Milk, after the Last Hand
When I was a student, I sometimes played in bars with men who worked and had more money than I did. I was reasonably good at cards, and I often won. At that age, it was easy to focus on my side of the experience: the satisfaction of playing well, the money I had won, the feeling that I knew what I was doing.
Then, at the end of the evening, a request would change the meaning of it all: someone would ask to borrow money to buy milk for his children. Until a short while before, that money on the table had seemed to be nothing more than stakes. In that request, it became working hours again, the household shopping, the needs of people who had not taken part in the game.
I wondered how that man would feel the following day, returning to work knowing that he had lost a day's wages. I cannot know what was really going through his mind. But the thought struck me: the effort he would have to make again, the money that was no longer there, the family that would have to go without something. The next day would not be a fresh start. He would also have to deal with what the night before had taken away.
Today, I would not recount those wins as evidence of my skill. That request for milk money seems far more important than the score. It prevents me from looking at a game only from the seat I occupied: behind someone's lost money, there may be consequences the winner never sees.
What Being Able to Afford It Really Means
‘I can afford it’ does not simply mean ‘I have that amount in my pocket.’ I may have money available and already have obligations that depend on it: the rent, medical care, the children's schooling, an agreed purchase, a cushion for unexpected expenses. Physically holding a banknote does not erase the responsibilities it should help me meet.
Yet I would not want to turn the remark I heard as a child into a division between rich people who are entitled to gamble and poor people who deserve a scolding. Wealth does not make anyone immune to addiction, and financial difficulty does not take away the right to enjoy yourself. It seems to me, rather, a reason to look for pleasures that do not make that difficulty worse. A pastime should lighten the day, not become another threat we have to protect it from.
And the price is not only financial. If an evening repeatedly takes the time promised to the children, the attention owed to a partner or the next day's peace of mind, I cannot say it cost nothing simply because I broke even. Even winning can come with a loss that the balance at the table does not record.
This is the more demanding meaning I give those words today: I can afford something when its cost is not passed on, without agreement, to someone else's life. Not everything I can pay for truly falls within the freedom I have to choose for myself.
The Weekly Betting System
I am deeply troubled by the idea of a bet becoming a compulsory appointment: the system that must be played again, the betting slip that must not be missed, the fear that this will be the very week when the numbers pursued for years finally come up. I am not saying that a weekly habit is enough to diagnose an addiction. I am saying that, given the way I want to live, I do not want to add the duty of feeding a paid-for hope to my commitments.
For me, a possible lottery ticket once a year can remain an occasional gesture. But I do not consider it harmless by definition, nor would I recommend it to someone trying to stop. It is a different choice from relying on gambling to change your circumstances. The wish for a better life deserves plans, skills, help and real opportunities: it should not be left waiting for a draw.
A simple calculation can put things back into perspective. Ten euros every week becomes €520 in stakes over a year, before any winnings. That is not automatically €520 lost, but it is €520 committed. Each individual amount may seem negligible; the habit as a whole may carry a weight we prefer not to see.
The word ‘system’ deserves a little less mystique, too. Covering more combinations can increase the overall chance of a prize, but it means more entries and a higher cost: it does not make each combination purchased more likely to win. And repeating the same numbers does not build up an entitlement to a prize. I would not want to confuse persistence, a virtue in so many parts of life, with the idea that chance must eventually reward it.
The Scale of the Issue, without Confusing the Numbers
To accompany these reflections, I looked for verifiable data, consulted on 14 September 2026. The publication date does not always match the year being measured, and participation, expenditure and addiction are not the same thing.
In Italy, the report on public gambling for 2025 records approximately €165.3 billion in stakes, €143.4 billion in winnings and €21.9 billion in player expenditure. The total staked includes bets funded by playing previous winnings again: it is not €165 billion all lost. The expenditure figure, by contrast, takes the money returned into account. Tax revenues, including withholding taxes on winnings, amount to approximately €11.47 billion. Italian Chamber of Deputies, summary of the 2025 report.
In a publication dated 3 September 2026 covering 2024, Istat estimates that 31.9% of people aged at least 14 took part in games offering cash prizes during the year: approximately 16.609 million people. That is a measure of participation, not a count of people with an addiction. Istat, games and video games in 2024.
Worldwide, a meta-analysis published in July 2024 estimates that 46.2% of adults had gambled in the previous twelve months and that 1.41% fell into the problem gambling category. These are summaries of surveys from different years, using different definitions and tools, not diagnoses counted in 2026. I have not identified a later, directly comparable global estimate. Tran and colleagues, The Lancet Public Health.
I would not use these percentages to decide whether someone sitting beside me has a disorder. They remind me that we are not discussing merely an individual weakness or a handful of unlucky stories. Nor can the fact that an activity is authorised by the state turn it into a promise of well-being.
How Likely Are You to Win?
The question needs a qualification: win what? The top prize, any prize, or an amount that genuinely leaves us ahead after all our bets? These are different outcomes. A prize equal to the ticket price gives our money back; it does not increase it. Even a win larger than a single stake can leave the balance for the evening or the year in the red.
The following calculations concern a single combination or ticket, under the conditions specified, not a personal prediction. The probabilities for number games follow from the possible combinations and the prize categories; percentages are rounded. For games with draws, I assume fair draws with uniformly distributed outcomes. This is not a ranking of which games to choose.
- Lotto, on a single wheel and playing exactly the number of numbers required for each bet type: estratto, 1 in 18; ambo, 1 in 400.5; terno, 1 in 11,748; quaterna, 1 in 511,038; cinquina, 1 in 43,949,268. These are five different bets, not five probabilities that can all be applied indiscriminately to the same slip. ADM Lotto rules.
- SuperEnalotto: matching all six numbers has a probability of 1 in 622,614,630. A number-matching prize for at least two matches, including the 5+1 category, has an overall probability of approximately 4.9631%, or 1 in 20.15. This excludes SuperStar, WinBox and Seconda Chance. Official prize categories.
- Eurojackpot: matching 5+2 has a probability of 1 in 139,838,160. Winning in any of the twelve prize categories has a probability of approximately 3.1416%, or 1 in 31.83. ADM rules.
- MillionDAY, base game: matching all five numbers has a probability of 1 in 3,478,761. A prize for at least two matches has a probability of approximately 5.9935%, or 1 in 16.68. Official probabilities.
- VinciCasa: matching all five numbers has a probability of 1 in 658,008. A prize for at least two matches has a probability of approximately 10.8777%, or 1 in 9.19. Official prize categories.
- 10eLotto, with ten numbers played, twenty drawn and no additional options: matching all ten numbers has a probability of approximately 1 in 30,963,246. A base-game prize, which in this configuration includes zero matches or between five and ten matches, has a probability of approximately 10.9157%, or 1 in 9.16. Probabilities and official prizes.
- Lotteria Italia, the 2025 edition, which ended with the draw on 6 January 2026: with 9,616,109 tickets sold, a single ticket's probability of winning the sole first prize was 1 in 9,616,109. This is not the probability of winning any prize, nor is it the final figure for the 2026 edition, which is still under way. Official summary of the 2025 edition.
- Gratta e Vinci: there is no single probability for every ticket. For example, in the €3 ‘2026’ series, the initial batch of 12,960,000 tickets contains two top prizes of €200,000: 1 in 6,480,000. Across all prize tiers, approximately 30.6717% of tickets carry a prize, but only 15.4717% carry a prize greater than the €3 paid, before any taxes. The difference consists of prizes that return the ticket price. These probabilities apply to the initial batch, not to the tickets remaining at a particular retailer. Prize plan for the ‘2026’ series.
For sports betting, poker, slot machines and other games, there is no single percentage that applies to every bet: events, rules, opponents and prizes vary. In particular, betting odds are not a certain probability, and an average return-to-player percentage does not promise an individual player that they will recover that proportion of their money. Gambling Commission, understanding return to player.
Chance Does Not Remember What We Have Given It
The six-number jackpot in SuperEnalotto provides an understandable example. There are 622,614,630 different sets of six numbers that can be chosen from ninety. A single entry covers one of them. Ten different entries in the same draw cover ten: they increase the overall chance, but do not make each set of numbers clever or lucky. The extra money buys more attempts, not a better prediction.
Playing in different draws requires a different calculation. If the probability of an event is p and the draws are independent, the probability of it happening at least once in n draws is 1 − (1 − p) raised to the power of n. Previous losses do not increase the probability in the next draw. Nor has a number that has not appeared for a long time built up a debt to us.
And a ‘one in a million’ probability does not mean that winning is guaranteed after a million attempts. This is precisely the distinction I want to remember: the mathematical possibility of a prize is not a promise made to my life. Someone may win. But I cannot stake the future of the people I love on that someone having to be me.
When Stopping Requires Help
The term gambling addiction should not become an insult, or a diagnosis we assign on the strength of a single habit. The WHO describes the disorder in terms of impaired control, increasing priority given to gambling over other activities, and continuing despite negative consequences. Harm can also occur without reaching a clinical threshold. These criteria lead me to a caution: setting a budget or still finding gambling enjoyable is not enough to rule out a problem. WHO, gambling.
Chasing losses, increasing the amounts to seek the same excitement, borrowing money to gamble or putting the household budget under strain are signs to take seriously, not cover up with ‘I know what I'm doing.’ It is wise to speak to a professional and seek support, without waiting until everything has been lost. NHS, recognising gambling-related problems.
In Italy, since June 2026, the ISS has provided a single addictions helpline, 800 940 789, anonymous and free, operating Monday to Friday. The dedicated numbers also remain active: for gambling, 800 558822, Monday to Friday from 10 am to 4 pm. The service also directs family members and friends towards local sources of support. New ISS number and dedicated gambling service.
It is not enough to tell someone who is struggling to show the strength we believe we have. I can be firm about protecting the family's money while refusing to humiliate someone who needs help. The remark that guided me must not become a condemnation of those who cannot stop. This essay is a personal reflection, not a test for deciding who has an addiction.
What I Would Like to Leave My Children
My children, I would like all three of you to remember that money has a history before it reaches the table. It may represent a morning at work, something forgone, security built little by little. And it often already has a destination: someone is waiting for it, even without knowing it. Looking at a stake without seeing all of this means seeing only the smallest part of it.
I am not handing gambling down to you as a necessary experience. You can have fun, spend time together and enjoy a challenge without betting money. If, as adults, you choose otherwise, do not call something freedom when it compels you to lie, borrow or take peace of mind away from your home. And never treat a win as proof that you are safe from risk.
Remember that request for milk money. Not to look down on the man who made it, but to remember the children who, without sitting at the table, could lose alongside him. I would like your idea of enjoyment always to make room for the people who bear its consequences, too.
If one day you realise that you cannot stop, talk about it. Do not defend an image of strength at the cost of being left alone with the problem. Asking for help does not take away your dignity: it is a way of returning to the care of what matters.
Gambling may cost the price of an evening; it should never cost a family's tomorrow. That, in the end, is what I would add to the remark I heard as a child. Because the most important luxury is not being able to afford to gamble. It is being able to come home without having put something on the table that we were meant to protect.
Papy