I read a cultivation novel recently that had a pretty heavy element of rape and cuckoldry to it. It portrayed being raped as, basically, a foundational sexual experience for the girl. It forces a dichotomy of either living as damaged goods or rejecting that value entirely and siding with the rapist in an attempt to reclaim some agency from the incident. Said foundational experience with being dominated by a man also creates a negative contrast in which other men that don't dominate her seems week in comparison. Men that the girl originally knew are hated in particular, for failing their role and responsibility as protector. Behind all the melodrama there's a very cynical psychology regarding mate selection, and the rapist jumps way up in the ranking, simply by making all prospective non-rapists look like cucks. The rapist either sees this happen first hand, or sees the eventual outcome, and is usually validated for the rape.

Gambling can serve a practical purpose, but it takes personal discipline and a clear understanding of one's financial goals. Say there's an important asset available to purchase, it is a time-limited opportunity, and your available funds can't afford it. If, for whatever reason, it's impossible to secure the necessary funding in time to acquire the asset in question, gambling provides a chance at securing the funds, and if the opportunity is worth more than whatever your available funds could otherwise be used for, then gambling becomes a fiscally responsible decision. The "house cut" is a fee for performing the service in question, the same way a lender gets interest for loaning funds.

Kaiji is in a very similar situation to this, except the asset he wants is himself- specifically to escape debt slavery, or wage slavery when he's debt-free. Even if he works his entire life he won't be able to buy that, or so he believes, and so he joins these comically evil and unfair death games because the chance to escape slavery is worth more than a lifetime as a slave. This type of self-awareness of his status in the world is also exactly what Tonegawa called the Hero's Road contestants sick for lacking: They lacked the self-awareness to perceive the danger of the gamble, just like they lack the self-awareness to perceive that they are being slowly bled over the course of their entire lives by their superiors.