Thinking winning means you made a good decision.

You can make a terrible bet and win, or a well-reasoned bet and lose. Judge the decision using what you knew before the result.

Say you bet money you need for a bill. The bet wins, so you can pay it. That can make taking the risk feel sensible. But the money you stood to lose, and what losing it would have meant, were the same before you knew the result.

A result can hide a mistake.

It can also make a reasonable prediction look foolish. An unexpected bounce doesn’t mean everything you knew about the game was wrong.

Ask what made the decision reasonable beforehand. What did you know? What could you lose? Could you afford that outcome?

There are two different questions here: whether the odds offered a favorable deal, and whether risking your money made sense for you. Even a financially favorable bet can be a bad personal decision.