You can gamble without gambling something away, though. Like I said, I do this for fun. Throughout the entire ultimate cycle I kept making bets about what I thought was going to happen despite what the current zeitgeist may have been at the time- and being right felt pretty good as a result
It also gave me an opportunity to analyze the speculation community in this context as well, to use as a tool for speculation. As in, what patterns should be followed, why people are expecting one way, what may end up happening to cause a big upset, etc