In Macau casinos, besides Texas Hold'em, most of the games are about guessing big or small, guessing numbers, or slot machines.

You can gamble on big or small at any time, and there's actually no need to specifically bet here, but here you'll find people from all over the world willing to spend 50, 500, or 5000 yuan to play baccarat, blackjack, or bet big and small.

Each big area is just one game; it doesn't matter which table has more people or fewer people.
Passersby might watch for fun, some think the dealer is a woman, and others look to see who has the best luck and follow suit.

Feng Wu chose to play slot machines because his mother-in-law once won tens of thousands of Singapore dollars in Singapore.
So we exchanged 10,000 chips to play the slot machine, took a while to choose, watching gameplay, checking where more people were, and which game had the largest jackpot.

The slot machine started.
Every time we topped up 2000 yuan, the balance inside the machine fluctuated but never exceeded 3900, for example:
2000 → 3000 → 3900 → 3000 → 1000 → 2500 → 2900 → 1000 → 0.

After losing three sets of 2000 yuan, since we had been playing for about an hour, Feng Wu suggested we keep going while he went to find a “Gogo Mei.”
We continued playing for about 40 minutes, and by the time he returned, we only had 3900 left.

He suggested going all-in and letting him take over.
Sure enough, after switching players, it was a different story. Soon, he hit a small jackpot, and the balance reached 19,000.
We kept playing for another half hour, and the balance dropped to 13,000.

I suggested stopping, taking the 3000 yuan profit, and passing three checkpoints. If we passed all three, it would be 24,000, and each person would get 8000.
Everyone agreed, and we found a machine that looked good and placed three small bets in a row.
Sure enough, winning 24,000, we happily exchanged chips and went home.

Many people call the money they “win” from gambling “profit.”
No matter how you interpret it, I think this perfectly illustrates the concept of “volatility”:
Upward fluctuations are profits, downward fluctuations are losses.

Getting unemployed and not finding a job is volatility;
Buying gold and watching its price fluctuate is volatility;
People who didn’t buy Bitcoin and see its price surge to 100,000 USD (those who didn't buy lose) are also experiencing volatility;
Salary increases are also volatility.

So I think the concept in “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” is really good.
We all walk alone amid volatility, and occasional swings or crashes make us think we are geniuses or idiots.

Casinos just make this phenomenon more obvious.
Chips rise and fall quickly, and results are immediate, which easily creates illusions:
When winning, people think they judged correctly,
When losing, they blame bad luck or just missed the rhythm.
But if you extend the timeline, it’s really no different from life.
Those people you see in the casino,
some start to increase bets after a few wins,
others try to follow the “winning path” right after a loss,
they all look very confident, but that confidence is actually based on the previous volatility.
Many people aren’t placing bets,
they are using their current actions to prove that their last lucky streak wasn’t just luck.

Slot machines are even more obvious.
They have no story, no opponents, no skill,
just a constantly oscillating curve.

What you press isn’t a button; it’s an expectation of the “next result.”
And this expectation gets amplified with each small win,
and rationalized with each small loss.
So when the balance goes from 2000 to 3900, people think “I’m starting to get the hang of it”;
when it drops back to 1000, they think “just one more try and I’ll get back.”
Nothing really happened; it’s just a segment of volatility playing out.
Winning 19,000 after switching players is also very interesting.
It’s too easy to interpret as “the person was right.”

But if you switch the person back and give the same amount of time and the same random sequence,
the result will most likely still fluctuate up and down.
People are naturally inclined to find a “reason” for the changes.
They find it hard to accept:
that some things simply have no reason.

So I increasingly believe that whether you “profit or not,”
many times you’re just standing on the upper half of a wave.
If you exit, it becomes a profit;
if you stay, it might just be a mid-point.
Getting laid off, getting a raise, asset fluctuations—these are all based on the same structure.
Just with longer cycles, slower feedback, and more people confusing luck with skill,
and mistaking a temporary success for a trend.

And what’s truly dangerous isn’t losing money,
but beginning to reconstruct your understanding of the world during an upward volatility.
What’s good about casinos is:
They make you quickly realize that you can’t control everything.
What’s bad is:
Not everyone will take this lesson away.
Most people will only remember that one time they won.

That day we won 24,000 and exchanged chips to go home.
It all ended just right here.
If we had sat a little longer,
maybe this story would have taken a different course.

--Feng Wu’s direction, I have my own.