The “almost won” that keeps you betting

One goal short, one symbol short, one number short. The brain of someone who bets lives that near-miss as if it were a win, and that is what brings them back. Underneath the money, the bet promises something else: to stop feeling small.

English edition of Isabella Becker’s Portuguese essay, adapted for international readers. The article presents Virtology’s interpretation; its specific theoretical mechanisms should be distinguished from independently established clinical findings.

Two matching symbols came up and the third stopped just beside them. The team needed one more goal, and the goal never came. One number short. If you bet, you know what happens next: you lost, and you still came out of that round wanting to play more than when you went in. The words come on their own. “That was close.” “I almost had it.” “Next time.”

That “almost” is one of the pieces that most keeps people betting, and it has an explanation in the brain. Here I show how it works, what the bet promises underneath the money, and why the family is almost always the last to know. The basis is the book O Que Nos Prende (What Holds Us), by Eduardo Casarotto, the creator of Virtology.

Before going on, one thing needs to be clear. This article is not about people without character. The circuit I am about to describe exists in every human brain, mine included. Pride and selfishness, which come up later, are two survival systems everyone carries. And placing the odd bet, in a World Cup pool or a school raffle, does not make anyone ill. What matters here is the moment the bet stops being a choice and starts giving the orders.

The brain that celebrates a loss

In 2009, the researcher Clark and his team ran an experiment that comes from outside Virtology and explains a great deal about what happens to people who bet. They had volunteers play a simplified slot machine inside an MRI scanner, which shows which brain regions are working harder at each moment. And they compared three situations: the win, the complete loss, and the “near-miss,” the spin where two cherries come up and the third symbol stops just beside them.

The result has two parts, and both matter. In the first, the volunteers felt the near-miss as less pleasant than the complete loss. Nobody liked almost winning. In the second, the near-miss increased the desire to keep playing. And it lit up the same brain regions that a win lights up.

There are two of them. The ventral striatum is a cluster of nuclei deep in the brain, below the forehead, that belongs to the reward circuit: it is what marks something as worth seeking again. The anterior insula is a region folded inside the brain, at the level of the temples, that turns what happens into a sensation in the body, like warmth in the chest or butterflies in the stomach. Faced with the near-miss, both responded as if the prize had come.

It sounds contradictory until we separate two things the brain keeps separate. The neuroscientists Terry Robinson and Kent Berridge showed that dopamine, the substance that runs along this reward pathway, does not produce pleasure. It produces wanting, the force with which something pulls you toward it. Liking is another system, with another chemistry. With repetition, wanting grows stronger and easier to trigger, while liking stays the same or decreases. I wrote about that split in detail in Why you keep doing what no longer gives you pleasure.

In gambling, this shows up almost in pure form. The person did not like losing by a hair, and wanted more. Casarotto draws a consequence from this that changes the conversation at home:

People who bet are not making it up when they say they almost had it. Their brain recorded the near-miss as a prize. And a prize, for the reward circuit, is a sign that the path is right.

A machine built on the near-miss

It was gambling that forced psychiatry to change its mind. In 2013, the DSM-5, the American psychiatric manual, moved pathological gambling out of the impulse section and placed it next to substance addictions (Rash and colleagues, 2016). It was the first time a behavior, with no molecule at all, entered that group. The World Health Organization also recognizes gambling disorder in its classification of diseases, the ICD-11.

And the format of the game weighs heavily. An estimate published in 2024 in The Lancet Public Health, pooling studies from several countries, found problem gambling in 1.41% of adults. Among people who play online casino games or slots, the figure rises to 15.8%, almost one in six (Tran and colleagues, 2024).

Phone slot machines and games like Brazil’s “little tiger,” Fortune Tiger, were built on the near-miss. A spin lasts seconds, there is no break and no end of the match, and the next chance is always one tap away. Casarotto insists on a point the family needs to hear: the person who lost control is facing a machine designed by very intelligent people to do exactly what it did to them. Weakness does not explain what happened.

And the machine weighs most on those who can least afford to lose. In August 2024, according to a technical analysis by the Central Bank of Brazil, about 24 million people made at least one instant transfer to betting sites. About 5 million people from families receiving Bolsa Família, Brazil’s cash-transfer program for low-income households, sent 3 billion reais to betting platforms, and 4 million of them were heads of household (Central Bank of Brazil, 2024). And Brazil’s national survey on alcohol and drugs, by the Federal University of São Paulo, found that among adolescents aged 14 to 17 who bet, 55.2% bet at risk, compared with 38.8% of adults (Unidade de Pesquisa em Álcool e Drogas, 2025). Gambling weighs most on those with the weakest brakes, and the weakest brakes belong to adolescents.

From the pool to the small hours

Nobody starts on a phone casino at three in the morning. Casarotto describes the path of every addiction in three stages: the entry door, the peak and the escalation.

In gambling, the entry door almost always looks innocent. The pool at work, cards with the uncles for coins, a bet with a friend on the football match, a scratch card at the bakery. For most people, it never becomes anything. But notice what happens there. There is the group, the teasing, the win in front of everyone, the “told you so.” The first win is not just money. It is recognition.

Football has become the widest door. Casarotto writes that the betting industry found a way to hook selfishness directly onto other people’s games, turning every corner kick into a personal gain or loss. Sunday, which used to be about getting together, became a cash register.

Then comes the peak. The first big win, the screenshot of the prize sent to the family group chat. That day, he was the man, and the brain recorded it.

And then comes the escalation, always with the same steps. The ten-reais bet becomes fifty, because ten no longer brings any thrill. The weekend bet becomes a bet at any hour, on any game, in any country, and then becomes the casino, which never ends. Losing becomes a reason to bet more, trying to win it back. The salary becomes a loan, the loan becomes a lie, the lie becomes someone else’s card.

There is a myth that does families a lot of harm: “he was already broke and went to try his luck.” A survey by Serasa, Brazil’s credit bureau, with the research firm Opinion Box, heard 4,463 indebted people who bet or used to bet. 57% of them were not in default before they started betting. 44% bet precisely to try to pay off a debt, and 52% lost more than they won (Bora Investir, 2024). For more than half, the debt came after the betting, not before.

What the bet promises underneath the money

If gambling destroys so much, what was it paying for?

Virtology maps 51 human needs, from sleep to the meaning of life. And underneath all of them it places the Lack: the background feeling of not being whole, which each person tries to cover in some way. When a need goes unanswered for a long time, the brain looks for the fastest shortcut. A bet is a very fast shortcut.

Writing about our relationship with money, Casarotto says that people who fall into debt through betting are chasing the saving turnaround, a rescue from their own insignificance. And he asks us to pay attention to that last word:

Money, here, is the symbol of something else. Seen through the needs, a bet usually pays for several at once:

• Resolving Lack. This is the fantasy of the turnaround. One win, and everything is solved: the debt, the tight life, the humiliation, the father who never believed in him.
• Importance. The winner is somebody. The one who got it right, who understands football, who has a system.
• Competition and Control. Beating the friend, beating the house. And the illusion that there is a strategy, that the result can be known.
• Experiencing Emotions and A Change of Environment. The heart in the mouth in the last minute. And, while betting, the person steps out of the life that is hurting.
• Security and Group Protection. The fantasy that, with the prize, nothing will threaten the household again.

That last one calls for special care. Looking at the millions of heads of household from Bolsa Família who sent money to betting sites, Casarotto says he does not see irresponsible people. He sees parents trying to protect their homes by the fastest route the phone offered, and being destroyed by it.

But the peak does not cover the Lack. The person won on Thursday. On Friday, they woke up without feeling recognized, or important, or at peace. The prize was gone in two days, almost always back to the betting site itself. So they play again, now with one more record of pleasure in the brain. The peace promised for after the prize always stays one bet away.

Why it is so hard to admit you lost

In Virtology, pride is not a moral flaw. It is a system in the brain, the SNO, the Pride Neurofunctional System (the Portuguese acronym is kept in the English editions). It exists to make sure we have a place in the group, because for almost all of human history, being cast out of the group meant dying. That is why it measures position all the time, and reacts to a drop in position as it would to a threat to life. I explained this system in Pride is not what you think.

In gambling, the SNO becomes almost visible. It is in “I have a system” and in “I was up until yesterday.” Admitting the loss means dropping in position, and the primitive system treats that drop as danger. So the person bets again, so as not to have to admit it. From outside it looks like stubbornness. Inside, it is an alarm.

Selfishness is also a system in Virtology, the SNE, the Selfishness Neurofunctional System. Its instruction is simple: first, I secure myself. At the moment of the bet, the other person stops weighing anything. His mother’s card becomes credit. The money for the child’s school supplies becomes the next round. Casarotto calls this instant the blackout: the moment when the impulse overrides everything the person knows and everyone they love. It is not malice. It is the brake failing at the exact second it was needed most.

And there are the Evolution Bands, the degree of maturity with which each person lives each area of life. Virtology describes seven. In the most primitive ones, the whole of life looks like a lottery: everything happens by luck or bad luck, and the person waits for the turnaround that will change everything at once. One of the 22 Laws of Life, the Law of Cause and Effect, describes the other way of living. Every choice is a cause that keeps acting, and what we reap is the sum of what we planted. Casarotto calls this crossing the move from the lottery to the field. It is exactly the crossing a gambler has to make.

What the family sees first

Gambling is the addiction that shows the least. With drinking, the loss of control reaches the body, and the family sees it. With gambling, a person can be losing the whole house sitting on the living-room sofa, sober, phone in hand. Nobody notices anything until the day the truth comes out all at once.

Almost always, this is what the family sees first:

• The card that is declined. At the supermarket, the pharmacy, the petrol station. Many families find out this way.
• Money that disappears without explanation. The rent that is late, the transfer to the cousin “who was going to pay it back on Friday,” the loan taken out through the banking app, the thing that was sold.
• The light of the phone in the small hours. Under the door, at three in the morning. And the answer that he was watching a video.
• The worry that never leaves his head. Together with the difficulty stopping and the attempt to win losses back by betting again. These are signs that deserve attention, and a health professional knows how to assess them.
• The sentence. “I was going to win it back. I almost had it.”

When the truth comes out, the urge to shout is enormous, and understandable. But humiliation hits pride head-on, and a humiliated proud person often bets again to prove he can still win. Telling the truth firmly and without contempt protects far more.

Protecting the household is also care. Keeping the family’s money separate, putting the cards away, understanding the whole situation before taking on any debt, and agreeing on what you are able to offer. This is not distrust and it is not punishment. It is a boundary. And it is worth looking at the culture of luck at home: the family pool, the scratch card as a gift. It does not have to be forbidden. But near someone who is trying to get out, there is no such thing as an innocent bet.

Gambling lives on secrecy. The family helps when it makes the secret unnecessary. And it helps, too, when it notices, and says out loud, every small achievement of the person who is getting out. The recognition he was looking for in the prize can start to come from somewhere else.

The turnaround that is slow

There is treatment with evidence behind it, and its basis is psychotherapy. In clinical trials, manualized cognitive behavioral therapy, done step by step, did better than Gamblers Anonymous and better than self-help through reading alone. Therapies that correct the typical thoughts of gambling, such as “now it will pay,” “it’s almost there” and “I can feel today’s the day,” did better than staying on a waiting list without treatment (Rash and colleagues, 2016). A mutual-help group can accompany treatment, but should not be the only care. Virtology comes in alongside treatment, never in its place.

What Virtology adds is work at the root: the Lack and the hunger for importance. No virtue works alone, and the order follows the Pyramid of Virtues: first the Treatment Foundation, then Development, and the Top as the horizon.

Humility and Selflessness open the way, as a pair. For someone who bets, Humility fits into the hardest sentence of their life: “I don’t have a system, I lost, I am not the one who is going to win.” When the hunger for importance eases, the saving turnaround loses its appeal, because nobody needs to be rescued from their own insignificance any more. Selflessness puts the other person back in their place. Mother becomes mother again, not a credit card. The child becomes a child again, not an obstacle between the person and the next round.

The rest of the Foundation comes along, in no fixed order. Acceptance is the exact opposite of chasing losses: money lost is lost, and accepting it is what stops the bleeding. Forgiveness makes it possible to look at the size of the damage without drowning in it, and allows the family, in time, to let go of the reckoning. Responsibility gives each debt a name, an amount and a deadline, and sits down to renegotiate them one by one. The State of Certainty works on the anxiety about the future that the bet was trying to solve in one go, and it has nothing to do with religion. Perseverance sustains the ordinary day, with no turnaround at all, which is where real life happens. And Individuation helps the person discover who they are once they are no longer “the guy who is going to win.”

Only then comes Development. The combination Virtology indicates for addiction, compulsion, impulse and immediacy adds three virtues from this level to the Foundation: Truth, Gentleness and Patience. Truth undoes the secret, and needs Humility and Responsibility before it. Gentleness creates the pause before the click, because gambling lives on haste, on the five-second bet that leaves no room to think. To work, it needs Humility, Acceptance, Selflessness, Responsibility and Individuation already under way. Patience, which goes in a pair with it and depends on Humility and Selflessness, sustains the waiting. For gambling, Casarotto also highlights the Pursuit of Improvement, which first requires Humility, Forgiveness and Perseverance. It means trading the one-second conquest for the conquest that takes time: the course, the job, the debt paid off, the small business that grows slowly.

Further up, as the horizon, are Love of Neighbor and Helping Others, at the Top of the Pyramid. They are virtues that rest on everything that came before. Casarotto says he has seen gamblers in recovery become the person who helps others climb out of the same hole. That pays importance in a way the bet never did, because it does not end the next day.

A practice for this week

Gambling grows in secrecy and in haste. This practice gives back light and time, and it is for anyone who bets and has not yet told anyone.

The “almost” will not stop showing up overnight. The urge to win back what was lost keeps calling, especially on hard days. What changes, with treatment and with virtue, is that the phrase “I almost had it” stops sounding like a promise and starts sounding like what it is: the brain celebrating a loss.

And the importance the person was seeking in the prize is still a legitimate need. It just needs another path, slower, one that does not vanish the next day: the debt paid off bit by bit, the trust that returns little by little.

Gambling debt that grows in silence, shame about telling anyone, and the feeling that there is no way out make a dangerous mix. If you, or someone in your home, talks about disappearing, dying, or the family being better off without them, that cannot wait for the next appointment: contact your local emergency services or a crisis line today. To treat gambling, look for addiction services or a mental health service where you live; mutual-help groups such as Gamblers Anonymous can accompany that care. And in the meantime, do not borrow from loan sharks or take out a new loan to cover the betting. No debt is worth a life.

Continue with SNO and SNE: two systems at the root of neurosis, Pride is not what you think, or the 12-Step guided trail.