This makes sense

Discusses gambling addiction and the concept of" near miss." A gambler may become addicted because of the constant rewards or reinforcements that they are given in the gambling situation. The nature of such reinforcements can be multiple. For instance, they could be financial eg, winning money, physiological the thrill and the" buzz" of gambling, psychological eg, raising of self-esteem, peer praise and/or psychosocial eg, the social meaning of the activity, rites of passage etc. There are also multiple stimuli that may be perceived to be rewarding in specific gambling settings because they produce excitement, arousal, and tension eg, pre-race and race sequence at the race track, the flashing lights of a slot machine, the spinning roulette wheel, the placing of bets. The basic proposition is that gambling behaviour is maintained by winning and losing sequences within an operant conditioning paradigm. However, there can also be intermediate reinforcers in the guise of" near misses". Gamblers experiencing near misses may take them as encouraging signs by confirming the gambler's strategy and raising hopes for future success (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)