Dostoyevsky had a gambling problem which threatened, from time to time, to eat up the considerable sums of money he made from his books. He writes with insight and sympathy about Alexei, who tries but repeatedly fails to break his addiction. Writing the book was itself a bit of a gamble for Dostoyevsky, who finished it in one month (dictating to the young woman who would eventually become his second wife) in order to appease his publisher. The novel stands as a classic picture of the pointless, superficial, but obsessive world of gambling.