This doesn't surprise me. Addiction By Design is a fantastic book on both the human psychology of creating and falling for gambling experiences. One of the main theses is that people who gamble compulsively eventually don't even care about winning or losing, they just play so that they can say they have control, they choose to put the coins in the machine, and whether they win or lose, it's their choice. It's no longer about the game, it's about having control of something, *anything*, in their life. As bankruptcy and foreclose interfere more in his life, I imagine there'll be even more gambling activity in-game.