Investing Vs Gambling

The mindset that I had initially of investing as gambling kept me away from starting my investment for many years.
During Chinese New Year, it is common that people gather to gamble for fun, laughter and bonding. I was much younger then, I recalled. As what I had is beginner's luck, several small wins that drew me deeper into playing. The last account when I participated, my luck was really bad. For all the rounds of Blackjack, no matter how good was my cards, I could never win. So as all gamblers are, the mindset was to recuperate the losses and in the final round, I put all my cash in. And I lost. I learnt this lesson really hard that if one gets too addicted and serious into gambling, he/she may win on a few occasions, but on a day of bad luck (as gambling is all about luck), you will undo/offset all the winnings previously, and perhaps gotten heavily in debt. I quitted gambling totally until today.

Fundamentally, I segregate the difference between the two with gambling only totally depending on luck vis-a-vis investment where one can perform due diligence sensibly to understand the situation before commiting. The latter proves to be an important factor before the luck part comes in.
Well, whether one is truly investing or gambling would depend on how he/she plans to invest and the method in doing so. If the method is to follow the herd blindly to buy any popular stock, or buying because of being envious of other's winnings, and doesn't carry out his/her own due dilligence, this will more closely tend to be in a gambling mode.
On the other hand, if one performs careful studies of the companies' business strategy, analyse their financial accounts, looked into the stock's performance trends and follow news updates on the organisation, this would constitute to prudence in investing rather than entirely leave it to fate. Here's a good reference to follow through in considerations before buying any stock.

Also, it would be wise to plan for the market entry price for each stock and prepare for what kind of contingencies required to manage a dip, eg to do long term investing to buy more shares for DCA or exit in the scenario of a high risk stock.
After all considerations well thought through, then the rest is up to luck.
Be a prudent investor, and not a tackless gambler