'lose your money' or 'lose money for you'

Question

I ran into this sentence,

With your average win rate, The game will consistently lose money for you.

I wonder why 'lose money for you' is used here instead of 'lose your money'.

Answer 1

The game will

lose money for you

means that by playing the game, by way of the game you lose your money. Only by you playing the game do you lose money. No play, no loss.

In other words, only you can

lose your (own) money

There are two basic ways to do this:

by yourself

you misplace the money yourself and can't find it
you buy something overpriced
you lose your money

with some help

something does something which causes you to lose money
something loses money for you

another way to express this is

something will lose you money
something will cause your amount of money to decrease

Betting against the odds will lose you money most of the time.

Answer 2

When we use the verb win, for example, it often takes an Indirect Object and a Direct Object:

• It will win [you] [money].

Here, the Indirect Object, you, represents the person who is going to get the Direct Object, in this case the money. If we wish to put the Direct Object money directly after the verb, then we cannot use an Indirect Object, but we can show who is going to get the money using a preposition phrase headed by for:

• It will win [money] [for you].

We see this kind of pattern with other verbs that take Indirect Objects:

• I'll give [you] [the book].
• I'll give [the book] [to you].

The verb lose can also follow this pattern:

• It will lose [you] [money].
• It will lose [money] [for you].

We often use the verb lose in this way when we expect something to win us money, but it does the opposite job. So when the speaker said It will lose money for you they were probably implying something like:

• It will lose money for you instead of winning money for you.

In these lose sentences, the person who should be receiving and benefiting from the money is no longer actually getting anything. However, the for-preposition phrase still represents someone who should be getting something. They are still presented as a would-be beneficiary (someone who gets something good or beneficial).

If the speaker had said:

• It will lose your money.

This sentence would not give us the idea that you should be winning money. It also does not represent 'you' as a would-be beneficiary. In this sentence, there is just one Object of the verb, your money. The Original sentence talks about the money, and about you too.

Answer 3

We have a saying in English: “to be a money-losing proposition”. No matter what you do, you will consistently lose your money in the venture. That seems to be the case here. I assume it’s Roulette, or some other game with the odds stacked against you.

Original Examples 1) lose your money 2) lose money for you

Normally, if you lose money, or someone else loses your money (such as a stockbroker- not that I think there is much difference from Roulette), it is unintentional, and not a causative action.

Example

“...and not a bad little chap. I feel responsible for him. I wish to heavens you had not lost him”.

However, “to lose" has some 11 definitions in both OALD and Merriam Webster on-line. The most applicable in this case would probably be #6 in MW: “To cause the loss of".

In addition, there is implied a favor being done, i.e. “to do something for someone”.

Example

"Oh for God's sake, if you can't manage, let me do it for you".

So, if you put the 2 ideas together, you could understand that the difference between the two sentences is that in #1, the game causes the loss of the money, but in #2 it loses your money and does you a self-serving favor while it doing it.