Narcissists Make Terrible Gamblers (Which Is Exactly Why They Love It)
Thursday, December 11, 2025.
Let us begin with the simplest truth: casinos were not built to separate fools from their money.
They were built to separate confident men from their delusions—preferably while those men are wearing sunglasses indoors.
A new French study, published in Alcoologie et Addictologie, confirms what most of us learned watching someone lose a mortgage payment at blackjack: narcissists gravitate to “strategic gambling” as if it were a personality test they’re certain they’ll ace.
The tragedy, of course, is that they never do.
The French Study That Quietly Undressed the Gambling Ego
First, I have to fess up. I was raised by a degenerate gambler who would disappear for days on a binge.
Researchers Anna Lewi and Céline Bonnaire recruited 177 such active gamblers—some online, some dragged straight off a Parisian casino floor. Participants had either gambled weekly for a year or donated €500 to the house in the past 12 months.
In America, this is known as “the demographic you see at 2:37 p.m. on a Tuesday at Caesar’s.”
In France, it is called “a sample.”
Participants completed tests on:
• Gambling severity.
• Narcissism.
• Perceived personal luck.
• Gambling habits and type.
The result? A psychological map of the casino that reads like a sociology paper on self-delusion.
The Three Species of Gambler (and the One You Should Never Date)
Researchers divided gamblers into three categories:
Strategic gamblers:—poker, blackjack, sports betting. These are people who insist they’re using “skill,” even when they very clearly are not.
Non-strategic gamblers:—slot machines, scratch tickets. The emotional equivalent of turning on a fan for white noise.
Mixed gamblers:—the buffet eaters of the gambling world, equally committed to everything and nothing.
Mixed gamblers showed the highest levels of problem gambling, but narcissism? That jewel of psychological mischief?
It belonged almost exclusively to the strategic players—91% of whom were men, which will shock absolutely no one.
Why Narcissists Flock to Strategy Games
Strategic gambling has excellent PR.
It’s marketed as skill-based. Masculine. Sharp. Clever. A place where intellect prevails over chance.
It is, in short, the perfect habitat for anyone who believes their self-concept should be perfectly laminated.
And narcissism thrives wherever society romanticizes the illusion of mastery.
• Poker is sold as genius.
• Blackjack is sold as discipline.
• Sports betting is sold as analytics.
Meanwhile, a scratch ticket is sold at a gas station.
So naturally, narcissists migrate to the high-status terrain, where losing still looks sophisticated.
The Mixed Gambler’s Fantasy: The Universe Owes Me One
Mixed gamblers—those who bounce between slots and skill games like existential hummingbirds—had a different problem: perceived personal luck.
They gambled more, lost more, and clung more tightly to the belief that Fortune herself had an emotional investment in their success.
This belief is not “hope.”
It is not “optimism.”
It is the psychological equivalent of ordering champagne because you “have a good feeling.”
What the Study Really Reveals About Ego, Luck, and Losing
The key findings:
• Narcissism predicted problem gambling only among strategic gamblers.
• Personal luck predicted problem gambling only among mixed gamblers.
• Non-strategic gamblers were mostly women, mostly single, and mostly uninterested in performing competence while losing money.
All data were self-reported, meaning narcissists evaluated their own narcissism—a process about as reliable as letting a fox complete a security audit.
Still, the patterns remain robust: the ego picks strategy; the deluded pick luck; the slots pick your wallet.
What This Means for Interventions (And Those Who Love a Gambler)
The researchers gently suggest that interventions should disrupt the positive mythology surrounding strategic gambling. Translation: stop treating poker like an avenue for masculinity rehab.
Therapists already know this: shame, grandiosity, and illusion of control form the triangle on which problem gambling sits.
Strategic gamblers don’t lose because they’re unskilled.
They lose because they believe they’re exceptions.
Mixed gamblers don’t lose because they’re reckless.
They lose because they believe the universe keeps a loyalty program.
Final Thoughts: The House Always Wins, Especially Against Ego
Gambling is the perfect stage on which to watch narcissism rehearse for its inevitable collapse.
Every gambler walks in believing they are the protagonist of the casino floor. Every gambler leaves discovering they were, at best, a subplot.
But the narcissist?
He leaves believing the loss is a fluke—and returns tomorrow to prove a point no one asked him to make.
If there is a moral here, it is simply this:
The house does not need to know your name.
It only needs to know your personality type.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Lewi, A., & Bonnaire, C. (2024). Narcissism, personal luck, problem gambling: Comparing gambling types. Alcoologie et Addictologie, 46(2), 85–94.
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Lakey, C. E., Rose, P., Campbell, W. K., & Goodie, A. S. (2008). Probing the link between narcissism and gambling: The mediating role of judgment and decision-making biases. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21(2), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.582
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(For illusion of control, gambler’s fallacy, intuitive misjudgment.)
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Rosenfeld, E., & Kraus, S. W. (2021). Gambling-related cognitive distortions: A meta-analysis. Addictive Behaviors, 112, 106601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106601
Toneatto, T. (1999). Cognitive psychopathology of problem gambling. Substance Use & Misuse, 34(11), 1593–1604. https://doi.org/10.3109/10826089909039417
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