Charles Barkley is all about that action, boss.
The former NBA player loves to gamble. He’s taken many trips to Las Vegas over the years, and at one point, he estimated he had lost $1 million “10 or 20 times.”
But Barkley has a new outlook after taking two years off from gambling to rethink his strategy. He recently admitted that he loves the action and hits up Vegas now and then, but does so in moderation, in a recent interview with Seth Davis of CampusInsiders.com.
“I was gambling for too much money,” he said. “You can never break the casino. You know I went to Vegas a bunch of times and I won a million dollars in a weekend. I did. Probably 10 times. But I’ve also went to Vegas and lost a million probably three times that much.”
That’s a lot of money to give back to the casino. But Barkley said he has since revisited his gambling strategy, and understands that moderation is key.
“Every time I went to Vegas, my goal was to win a million dollars. So I’d get up $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, and then lose it all and the million. So I quit for two years. I was like, ‘This was getting out of hand.'”
Barkley said he was never worried about becoming addicted to gambling. He thinks his problem was that he was betting with too much money.
“When I go to Vegas now, I try to win a couple hundred-thousand dollars. If I lose a couple hundred-thousand dollars, I quit, and still have a good trip. You know it’s like anything. If you do it moderation, it’s all right. And now with my gambling, because I love the action, I love the juice, I just learned to do it in moderation.”
It seems like Barkley now treats gambling as a hobby—rather than a job. If he can manage to endure the “swings” that come from betting—without getting on tilt—he should be just fine in the future. Who knows, maybe he and Michael Jordan—who also enjoys gambling—will rendezvous in Vegas at some point and become friends again?