Why be an option/futures/day trader when it is zero-sum?
johnrob: This is human nature.  It happens everywhere, the most commonplace example is a lottery ticket: that is a negative sum game.  Venture capital is also a negative sum game (EDIT: I'm actually not sure about this, the winnings of top VCs might outweigh the losses of the majority).Risk hungry people will pay a premium for increased upside.  For example, they will prefer a win 20-lose 30 game over a win 10-lose 0, because 20 > 10.