I’m not referring to the people who gamble once in a blue moon. I’m talking about those who gamble habitually.
How come they’re all such garbage people, with legitimately no exceptions? Take a look at any high-stakes poker table and everyone except maybe the dealer is a de-facto scumbag.
And, as you said, your friend has the skills to shift his experience from games of chance towards games of skill.
Back when I was a student I also knew fellow students that would play online poker for beer money. Basically there is a dominant strategy for each hand you have, so if you’ve got 4 or 5 games being played concurrently then ultimately you’ll end up coming out in profit.
These were just philosophy students too, not mathematicians. I wonder why more people don’t do something similar. Maybe it requires more self control than you’d expect to stick to the “rules” of the strategy.
It’s still another skill to learn and master. Some folks work on winning hands at poker, others aim to win free beer at trivia. I, for one, can’t bluff to save my life and have the memory of a goldfish so I’d be a horrible candidate for poker haha.