There may be alternatives to gambling with money but I don't think they will be as fun as gambling with real money. Gambling games like poker or blackjack are fun games but they can't be comparable if they are played with money at stake. The sense of competition and of trying to outwit your playmate is not high when the game is all just for fun without money involved. It is okay to lose when there's no money at stake. With money, losing is avoided at all cost. This causes the adrenaline and the thrill to rise.
I agree with you, without real money in gambling the games like poker or blackjack become very different. I used to play some poker only with play money to try some new strategies and found that people play more aggressive if it's not there own money they lose. There were so many more All ins happening that it became not realistic to keep trying out new strategies. To me the excitement in gambling comes not only from winning or losing, but also from the chance to win a big jackpot. Without the chances of winning real money the thrill is not there. It would be nice to have a casino where you can only win, unfortunately that is not realistic. For us to have the chance to win a jackpot, we must also face the chance to lose money. The only real alternative I see to money would be to gamble with things. For example, you could gamble with your PS4 and if you win you get another one. I did that in the past with CSGO skins, it was a nice way to build up my inventory.
I understand the point of both and in fact as mentioned above one could play cheap tournaments between $0.1 and $1 to get the thrill of playing for real money, but in the case of poker you have to ask yourself, do you really get the thrill with this type of buyin? The reality is that everything depends on the volume that one plays, the amount of buyin is everything at the end of the day.
On the other hand when you enjoy playing poker and it can be cliche but it does not matter if it is with playmoney, in Stars (PS) the play money that is played is really interesting and in fact you can meet Moneymaker playing tournaments with buyin in millions, it is an interesting move and These guys look like they're enjoying it.
I repeat, playing for real money is for me the goal, but if you get the right players and the right niche of players the thrill of playing with playmoney is the same, I guess the hours of play accumulating and losing all the playmoney offers them the same sensation.
Although the subject of another thread, one day we will have official tournaments and international competitions that represent the essence of winning just by representing your country, and I assure you that if representing your country requires playing free to go to international tournaments just for a title, Available players will be there, poker has a slow adoption as a sport but there are countries that accept it as such.