Topic : Gambling

The Gambler’s Fallacy is the mistaken notion that repetition changes the odds. If you flip a coin five times, always getting tails, there’s still a 50-50 chance that you’ll get tails on your next flip. You can’t say— “Tails has come up five times in a row, so now it’s ‘time’ that heads comes up.”

Gambler’s Anonymous

• God in the Dock, C. S. Lewis, p. 59.
• The Moral Catastrophe, David Hocking, Harvest House, 1990, pp. 227ff

Human beings are incurable optimists. They believe they have a pretty good chance to win a lottery, but that there is hardly any chance of getting killed in a traffic accident.

Bits & Pieces, May 26, 1994, p. 9

• Horse sense is what keeps horses from betting on what people will do. - Oscar Wilde
• There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can. - Mark Twain
• It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet. - Damon Runyon

Sources unknown

• Average number of dollars, per capita, spent on lottery tickets each year, in the top ten lottery states: $135.

Gaming & Wagering Business, reported in American Demographics, 2/89

My grandmother, a staunch Southern Baptist, had marched me off to Sunday school and church regularly. So when I switched to the Episcopal church after marriage, she challenged me: “What’s wrong with the Baptist Church, son?”

“Well,” I explained, “Carole and I flipped a coin to see if we would go to her church or mine, and I lost.”

“Serves you right,” said my grandmother. “Good Baptists don’t gamble.”

J. E. Bedenbaugh