Luck factor

[ChipsAhoy72]

So after losing ninety nine percent of every showdown where the bad guy needs a runner runner, or has two outs. I decided to do some digging around about this madness. I've found a few interesting things. I'll put the best stuff up here.

 

 

Lucky Streaks

 

When you’re placing bets on a game like craps or roulette that is based on chance, it turns out that your betting shifts your odds. A person who wins two bets in a row has a 57 percent chance of winning the next one, but a person who has lost two bets in a row has only a 40 percent chance of winning the next. Why? According to a study published last year, people again fear that their bets will regress to the mean—that if they won, they are more likely to lose the next time, so they compensate for it by making safer bets each successive time.

 

When people who have been winning take safer bets, it means they'll probably keep winning; when people have been losing, they take riskier bets to try to win, which means they actually lose more. The actual event the gambler bets on doesn't become any more or less probable, but past outcomes affect how the bettor allocates funds the next time around.

 

THE SCIENCE OF LUCK

IS THE PHENOMENON REAL? CAN IT BE HARNESSED?

By Alexandra Ossola March 17, 2015

[ChipsAhoy72]

DEALING WITH BAD LUCK

But a lucky life is not just about creating and noticing chance opportunities. Another important principle revolved around the way in which lucky and unlucky people dealt with the ill fortune in their lives. Imagine being chosen to represent your country in the Olympic games. You compete in the games, do very well, and win a bronze medal. How

happy do you think that would feel? Most of us would, I suspect, be overjoyed and proud of our achievement. Now imagine turning the clock back and competing at the same Olympic games a second time. This time you do even better and win a silver medal. How happy do you think you would feel now? Most of us think that we would feel happier after winning the silver medal than the bronze. This is not surprising. After all, the medals are a reflection of our performance, and the silver medal indicates a better performance than a bronze medal. But research suggests that athletes who win bronze medals are actually happier than those who win silver medals. And the reason for this has to do with

the way in which the athletes think about their performance. The silver medalists focus on the notion that if they had performed slightly better, then they would have perhaps won a gold medal. In contrast, the bronze medalists focus on the thought that if they had performed slightly worse, then they wouldn’t have won anything at all. Psychologists refer to our ability to imagine what might have happened, rather than what actually did happen, as “counterfactual.”

I wondered whether lucky people might be using counter-factual thinking to soften the emotional impact of the ill fortune that they experienced in their lives. To find out, I decided to present lucky and unlucky people with some unlucky scenarios and see how they reacted. I asked lucky and unlucky people to imagine that they were waiting to be served in a bank. Suddenly, an armed robber enters the bank, fires a shot, and the bullet hits them in the arm. Would this event be lucky or unlucky?

Unlucky people tended to say that this would be enormously unlucky and it would be just their bad luck to be in the bank during the robbery. In contrast, lucky people viewed the scenario as being far luckier, and often spontaneously commented on how the situation could have been far worse. As one lucky participant commented, “It’s lucky because you could have been shot in the head also, you could sell your story to the newspapers and

make some money.”

The differences between the lucky and unlucky people were striking. Lucky people tend to imagine spontaneously how the bad luck they encounter could have been worse and, in doing so, they feel much better about themselves and their lives. This, in turn, helps keep their expectations about the future high, and, increases the likelihood of them continuing to live a lucky life.

 

 

 

My two cents:

 

Now this was an interesting article, but I'm happy everytime I get rivered and it results in a split. And that's only because I'm unlucky enough to get rivered everytime.