I think this group has similar characteristics to the lottery winners. They become rich suddenly, after having beaten long odds.
You can make the same sorts of arguments about the rationality of professional athletes too. Most people who aspire to become professional athletes don't make it. Continuing to pursue the dream is largely an irrational decision.
Similarly, it is possible to play sports because you love it, not because you see it as a get rich scheme.
Participating doesn't have to be crazy behavior in either case.
That only makes it more likely that this person is losing money by playing. "Crazy" is too strong, I agree, but it's certainly not the shrewdest investment.
Some people enjoy gambling. If it pays off, yay! If it doesn't, it was only a couple of bucks that they felt they could spare.
I'm aware there are very poor people who play the lottery in hopes of it fixing their lives, even homeless people. And I don't think that's a great idea. But there are people who can spare a few bucks who just like playing.
One person I know used to call it "Contributing to my nephew's scholarship fund" because the lottery covers education expenses in that state.
I have only rarely played the lottery. It's not really my thing. But not everything in life needs to be decided with a slide rule for someone to be fundamentally healthy. In fact, I have seen studies that suggest that people who do a little gambling are typically healthier than average.
It's not supposed to be an investment, it's something you do for the fun of the "what if".
There. Just saved you n dollars where n is the number of times you want to play that game.
Humans also want a tiny possibility of it happening to make their "what if" worth, and are willing to pay to get that.
Just like they are more engaged when there are props and sets and costumes when they see a play. A play requires suspension of disbelief, so they could have also made believe that they see the set and costumes over a naked stage, but we don't want that, we prefer to have them as aids.
However, that's where the similarities end. Athletes become successful from years of hard work and sacrificing present enjoyment for future rewards. Lottery winners are chosen randomly from people who literally demonstrate how poorly they handle money buy buying lottery tickets.
I buy a megabucks ticket about once every year. Sometimes twice. I buy it for a little bit of fantasy. It's totally worth the dollar. In reality I'd hate to win a big lottery because the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it would ruin my life (not the financial aspect, I could handle that bit, it's the social consequences that would make me wish I had never won).
However, I will suggest that many poor people think coming into money would solve all their problems because money is very often the most obvious sticking point in their own life. In reality, they trade poor people problems for rich people problems and it doesn't come with some built-in education on how to handle rich people problems. (I mean a la The Matrix: "Download this to my brain." A lot of the advice they get falls on deaf ears and they are ill-equipped to sort good advice from bad.)
In fact, many poor people are incredibly dismissive of the idea that rich people have any problems. They often mock the problems that rich people have. So no surprise they aren't psychologically prepared to deal with the reality of sudden wealth in cases where they think "rich people don't have real problems."