Winner in the Long Run. Every professional gambler's target in any field.

Investments in general show their performance in annual report, in many years' report or in monthly basis. Investment in gambling doesn't fall away from that. The expected gain of the edge of a gambler is between 1-10% in the long run, being a month or years. Rarely and in specific occasions gains of 25% are reported although that sort of investments will most probably remain secret and known to few people

However, there is still an important difference between gambling's investment and, for example, a bank's investment. A bank account might have an 1% interest. Although the interest will be paid in the end of the year, it is added each day. That is, if there are $10,000 for 30 days in a bank account on 1%, there will be a profit of about $10 (instead of $100 for the whole year).

In gambling things change. In 30 days time there can be a loss of 5% and the next 30 days profits of 15%. Simply put, we can say that in that 60 days, the profit was 7-8%. How many gamblers would have been disappointed the first 30 days and would stop the investment, when it would turn up a profit?

From the example above we conclude that "winner in the LONG RUN" means a lot in gambling.

Is it however really a zero-sum game (that is, the loss of a gambler is profit for another) or, in order to calculate the investment's performance, some other things must be taken into account ?