In my humble opinion people should calculate how much money they will use and how much money will return back to gambling. By this way they can limit themselves pretty nicely.
Generally gambling addicts know such criteria, unfortunately many of the gambling addicts do not care how much money they spend, as well as the money they get from gambling wins.
Aware of the money at stake, sometimes many of us make bets to limit bets, for example: $10-100 dollars per day, but they never calculate what they spend annually without realizing that $ 36k has been donated to gambling, even though they have won occasionally, but if you take into account that you donate more than you get, that is the world of gambling, you never have special criteria, apart from losing.
Overall, we agree with what you said. in this case, that most gambling addicts don't really care about how much money they spend, as well as the money they win from gambling, the important thing is that they can still play to fulfill their addiction desires. if we try to calculate the total amount of money we spend per year for gambling, maybe the amount is quite large. however, we rarely realize this or maybe we often ignore it.
To be honest, I can not deny with what you say. that we don't have any special criteria, apart from losing.
well, even though we know very well, be it addicts or non-addicts. but anyway, we still gamble even though we realize that the money we risk is very high to lose. so like you said, this is the world of gambling. the fact is that we are still involved in it, even if only for a hobby.