This is quite an interesting question about the social dimension of betting, when Margaret was alive I shared all my betting activities with her, we analyzed matches together and celebrated wins together, she was the only person I told about my results and her validation mattered enormously to me, now that she is gone I tell no one, I continue betting with the same discipline and methodology but the wins feel somewhat hollow without her to share them with, I suspect I would still bet even if I could never tell anyone because the intellectual challenge remains satisfying but I cannot deny that sharing the success with Margaret was a significant part of the reward, her pride in our joint analytical work made the wins more meaningful than the money alone, this suggests that for me at least social validation from the right person was indeed part of the motivation even if I would have denied it at the time.
