Is luck real?

[Fishteacher73]

I ardently refuse to accept such concepts such as luck or superstition, yet I find myself having paterns that reflect past success as token of, for lack of a better word, luck.

For instance- Most of these come out when I play poker. I have two pairs of glasses, and one pair is the loosing pair and one is the winning pair. (I usually remember, but sometimes I forget and it seems to continue this "good luck charm" bent that drives me crazy).

I also have a specific number of times I shuffle when I deal. Bad hands if I don't shuffle the prescribed number (9).

What do you guys think? Luck or fiction?

[C1ay]

I can honestly say that I don't believe in any luck either, but I do tend to believe in Murphy's law, i.e. "Whatever can go wrong, will."

[UncleAl]

There are 300 million people in the US. A generic "one-in-a-million chance" happens 300 times/day on the average. Worldwide it happens 6000 times/day. For all that, Las Vegas makes its $billions/year from people who bet on fluctuations rather than odds.

[Buffy]

I'm a firm believer in the power of suggestion: If you believe you are having good luck, then depending on whether you're an optimist or a pessimist your brain will do things that increase or decrease respectively, your chances of a good outcome on your next "probabilistically" based event. The number of things that happen in life that you have absolutely no role in the outcome are actually fairly small.

And of course working off Uncle Al's numbers, getting a run on a particular day on those 1 in a million chances is actually not all that remarkable.

Cheers,
Buffy

[zadojla]

I hate it when people think they've been "jinxed" when I comment [at work] that nothing bad has happened in a long time. It's OK to kid around, but some get genuinely angry.
I confess I then "jinx" them every single day.

[Damo2600]

Luck is merely chance.

The definition is:

http://www.answers.com/luck

Einstein made the comment that 'God does not play dice'. Although Albert was an atheist he meant that every event is the direct result of a cause not chance. Cause and effect. Chance is the odds of 'cause and effect' taking place in a certain sequence. Chance needs to be relative to something.

Definitions (edit: sorry that should be Examples not definitions) of 'fortunate' and 'unfortunate' are relative to the observer.

Now if 'fate' is what you are talking about, or 'karma' as they say in India, that is a different story. Buffy has an interesting idea on mental suggestion.

Proof of fate does not exist. It is metaphysical. As such we cannot say.

'Jinxes' are based on superstition yet are interelated with fate.

Positive thinking does not change cause and effect. It merely changes how you react. Same with pessimism.

One in a million is relative to what. You have one in a billion; one in five; one in 3000. In regards to casinos, I learnt whilst studying statistics, is more in the order of 1:200million odds of a casion going broke.

If you have 100 reds in roulette the odds of the next colour being red is 16:37. With a 1:37 chance is of it being green or 'zero'. The odds of the next 100 spins being red is a very high number.

The answer to this question is based on poker. Is there a meaning behind nine shuffles that helps you win? This is either mathematical, mental (thanks Buffy) or metaphysical. I'd go for mathematical first. Try mental next. If not I'd suggest it maybe the latter.

Thanks
Josephine

[Smokinjoe9]

Actually in roulette, the wheel can be beat and some physics students proved it. They bought their own professional wheel and began to calculate their odds.
Based on fixed points on the wheel they did some serious calculating and found they could pick an 8th of the wheel(4 or 5 numbers) and beat the odds.
They built their own computer and software used a footswitch in their shoe to tap out when the ball passed the points, the computer(calculator, basically) would do the math and then send the signal to a set of small hammer like buttons attatched to the body that would give them the numbers they needed..
This is a true story and actually happened, they used this in Vegas and won a ton, sadly they were caught before they could make much more than it cost them to put it all together.
They had proven that it could be done and were quite happy with themselves..The moral of the story, no luck there just plain physics...

[niviene]

I believe in the Chaos theory rather than luck, myself. I guess I consider myself lucky that the chaos theory worked in my favor, when it seems to....

"Bank error in your favor. Collect $50!"

[Smokinjoe9]

Originally Posted by niviene

"Bank error in your favor. Collect $50!"

How Lucky for you.......Oh, I mean right on.

[Damo2600]

The moral is not 'luck does not exist' because luck is based on chance and chance is the odds of cause and effect taking place as I have explained. So the cause in this case would be the speed of the ball. Measure the speed of the ball in relation to the taps. I'm not up on roulette but doesn't the middle spin as well. So you would need two calculations. In this case either way it is not chance because you are using mathematics which beat the odds. I am using the term odds because the computer wasn't able to give the correct single numbers. Casinos frown upon this. Without mathematics the students were back to using odds. Right? Is there a mathematical system to everything we can calculate and predict the entire future with complete certainty? Watch the movie 'pi'.

The chaos theory is the same understanding as Einstein's "God does not play dice". The cause...butterfly flaps his/her wings.. the effect... a twister on the other side of the world. Plus infinite causes/effects in the middle of these two events. Everything is related. Is there a metaphysical 'force' playing 'cause and effect'. We can't measure this empirically...

Josephine