I don't think anyone doing the wager to get in the top 5k list of the wagering contest. You need to wager around $150k at least to reach there. It will cost you $1.5k+ to make that wager by playing 1% house edge games. The reward amount won't be worth after using the wagering strategies. I believe that most of the user has played normally and made the wager during this contest. People only use the wagering strategies to beat other users when they are too close to the top rank for their normal gambling activity. Now my rank is 1879 with $319k wager in the 5th birthday race of Stake.
Yes, we don't know if many gamblers will bet to enter the top 5k list of betting contests but there will probably still be some people who have done it before and want to do it again. But I agree with you that users have been playing normally and making bets and maybe some of them have no intention of raising their name to the top of the list and just playing as usual.
That "pride" thing never really made that much sense to me. I congratulate myself on not gambling too much and only gambling small enough that it doesn't matter to me. But at the end of the day, these people gamble way too much and they end up at the top of the leaderboard and they are proud of that? How could you proud that you gambled way too much? That's not something to be cheered for, that's something you should seek help about.
I mean I get it, casinos are always pushing and finding ways to make people gamble more and more, and they just say "if it's too much, don't do it" and yet promote it. But, you have to end up stopping yourself.
For us, it may not apply, but we don't know if it also doesn't apply to others because each person has different goals in gambling and entering contests. But we should know how to behave in gambling so we will not get too caught up in gambling. There may be people who take pride in breaking records for themselves and I think there are people like this. We just don't know.