In college I had a roommate whose family did lotteries and drawings. They had a real system - not anything illegal or outside the rules of the contests but kind of using the loop-holes and some techniques. For example if the contest rules said that only one entry could be turned in each day then the person who wanted the prize would take a whole book of entries and distributed them among all the other family members and each of them would enter every day that the contest lasted. They also only chose small, local contests where fewer people were competing. There were other things but I don't know them all and I couldn't write the book. They didn't win all the time but they probably won more often than any of the people that you know. It wasn't a certain knowing but like the stock market they did use probabilities. I would say that the drive to win was more based on thrift - sometimes they won stuff just so that they could sell it and sometimes they took a vacation that they otherwise wouldn't have paid for. I didn't see the thrill of 'money for free'. I think it does make a difference about how gambling is perceived when you work for it rather than hoping it will just jump into your hands.

Nothing in life is certain but gambling is perceived to be less certain than other risks but when it is turned into work and the decisions are made through education and research, evaluation and planning rather than on impulse, I believe it can be made to look much closer to precognition.