Do You Believe in Luck

Sorry. No luck. It wasn't luck that kept me out of jail in the 80's and it wasn't luck that caused a 40k windfall after a false arrest in 2003.

A lot of science is said to be luck. They found "X" and it was lucky. I can't see this. Sure, they did everything wrong and got the right answer, but that's not luck. They got the right answer because everything was in proper order to come to the correct answer.

Is Reality Real? Our eyes can only see so much and we require tools to see farther and as far as I know, luck like karma has never been discovered in a physical, measurable state.

Yes. I believe in luck, and i can sum them up Success = Effort + Luck. If you have the luck but you fail to do your homework, then there is no success in you story.

Yes, definitely. I think this is where a lot of gambling authors and conventional wisdom drops the ball. The standard line is that luck evens in the long run and ultimately converges to your EV, but this simply isn’t true. Your actual results diverge from expectation the more you play, they just diverge at a slower rate and the ratio of actual results to EV converges to one.

This means that the more you gamble the farther and farther you expect your results to deviate from EV, in real dollars not percentages. At the end of their lifetime some gamblers will be millions of dollars ahead of their lifetime EV, I don’t know what else to call them but lucky.

Quote: Tortoise

Yes, definitely. I think this is where a lot of gambling authors and conventional wisdom drops the ball. The standard line is that luck evens in the long run and ultimately converges to your EV, but this simply isn’t true. Your actual results diverge from expectation the more you play, they just diverge at a slower rate and the ratio of actual results to EV converges to one.

This means that the more you gamble the farther and farther you expect your results to deviate from EV, in real dollars not percentages. At the end of their lifetime some gamblers will be millions of dollars ahead of their lifetime EV, I don’t know what else to call them but lucky.

Statistical outliers.

Quote: AcesAndEights

Quote: Tortoise

I don’t know what else to call them but lucky.

Statistical outliers.

Tomato, tomato.

Quote: Dieter

Quote: AcesAndEights

Quote: Tortoise

I don’t know what else to call them but lucky.

Statistical outliers.

Tomato, tomato.

Potato, potato.

It is really not 'luck' in winning at the casino. At least at the table games. It is taking advantage of a situation that presents itself to you. If you have the knowledge, a bankroll to survive, the guts and the willpower you can win. Does not matter the amount, small or large. Does not matter the game. You can label it anything you really desire but it is not luck. The situation at any given table at any given game will be the same no matter if it's me or you or a dead monkey with stings attached to his paws. If we all made the same decisions, the results would not change.

Now, luck may come into play if you drove down a section of road at 100mph and I did the same. A police officer sitting on the side of the road would choose who to attempt to pull over himself. If he went after you then I was lucky and you were not.

Quote: Baccaratfrom79

you can win. Does not matter the amount, small or large. Does not matter the game. You can label it anything you really desire but it is not luck.

Good luck with that.

Quote: Tortoise

The standard line is that luck evens in the long run and ultimately converges to your EV, but this simply isn’t true. Your actual results diverge from expectation the more you play, they just diverge at a slower rate and the ratio of actual results to EV converges to one. This means that the more you gamble the farther and farther you expect your results to deviate from EV, in real dollars not percentages.

In math terms, that means that the variance of a sum of events increases, while the variance of the average decreases. And what you look at in your wallet is the SUM of your earnings/losses.

Quote: Tortoise

At the end of their lifetime some gamblers will be millions of dollars ahead of their lifetime EV, I don’t know what else to call them but lucky.

In my eye, luck implies some sort of unfrequentness. Which is not the case here: deviations from the mean are frequent and expected.

On the other hand, if by "luck" you simply mean a happy event happening, then OK. As in "Oh! the sun shines on our weddingday, we have luck." Or "It was a fifty-fifty chance affair. I have had luck."

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." Thomas Jefferson)