General Betting
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Winners are lucky. Losers are unlucky.
Winners are lucky. Losers are unlucky.
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Replies: 190
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Undern
You are sorely mistaken if you think anybody ( except the house) can win long term on games like roulette or craps. It is absolutely mathematically impossible and no amount of " timing" will ever overcome it. |
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FINE AS FROG HAIR - who said anything about long term. ffs I have a degree in financial maths
 ...I said I have seen people make huge amounts of money by playing a seemingly random game ... simply by knowing when to start/stop ie: timing can be a wonderful tool sometimes ... |
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I don't care if you're a rocket scientist. You're wrong on this. It's all about the long term.
Timing in the sense of stopping if and when you are ever lucky enough to get ahead and then NEVER going back is ok. Anything else would require some sort of extra-sensory perception which I believe is not something anybody has yet developed. |
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... and I said nothing about long term. All I said was that in my observation it is fascinating that in a game of luck - given the right timing people do make lots of money (just like lots of people lose lots of money) ...
... nothing more nothing less. |
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undern
If you mean that on a random basis a certain number of people will hit the roulette table and immediately go onwards and upwards. Nobody is disputing that. It's called good luck. Nothing to do with having an ability to time your forays to the tables though. " Nothing more nothing less ". Couldn't say it better myself. |
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Keep this up undern and I am going to have to put you in the paulme, schalke grouping I posted earlier in rely to JTG ( with the usual apologies of course).
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+--in reply---".
Btw where did you get this degree in financial maths ?. Manila ? |
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i like that post Investor
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tober
You telling me that you've never come across it before ? Have you been in a cave in Afghanistan ? |
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JTG : Trevh - my chimps could be getting better than even money on their flips - probability again dictates that plenty would still be big losers.
I don't think so JTG. Can anyone calculate how many of the 250,000 chimps would be down after placing 365 bets at 2.2 on even money shots? |
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Persistent winners are habitual - they do the same thing over and over again.
Persistent losers are habitual - they do the same thing over and over again. You just need to change your habits! - fortunately for winners (and for the gaming industry as a whole) the vast majority of losers are completely unable to change their habits. |
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In much the same way that us persistent posters post the same thing over and over again ?
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Indeed
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Indeed
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Indeed
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And again ?
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Indeed
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It is wonderful, in its way, how each of us regards ourselves as something special, above average or indeed way above average in most respects but especially in our gambling skills, and how when we win it is down to skill and when we lose it is down to bad luck. Pity those poor people who are just average or worse, below average.
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What's wrong with being average?
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Well you should know the answer to that one jimmy, shouldn't you ?
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I'll tell you when I get there Froggy...
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When ? Not if ?
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Oh ok then if and when...
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I wonder if the leading bookmakers also just got lucky? It's fair to say that plenty of bookmakers have gone bust so they may well have just been lucky especially in their early set up days. However, having enjoyed the "luck" does their knowledge and business models now allow them to consistently make profits.
If they take £250,000 on Liverpool v Norwich with £240,000 of that on Liverpool with the result being a draw did they just get lucky? Or when Dettori went through the card at Ascot losing them millions were they just unlucky? What if the Dettori sequence was repeated a few times over the space of a few weeks and what if all the fancied football teams couldn't stop winning? Are they too capable of seeing their black swan? |
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TheInvestor2
Thanks for your post - that sums it up pretty well. I didn't like the final WB pargraph though. That's just back fitting. Find some common traits amongst the winners and then conclude that it is these that have caused the winning.That's a flaw in the logic. Self made millionaires will no doubt show common traits - persistance,hard work,and the ability to take risks. Exactly the same as displayed by many bankrupts! Why do some make millions and others go bust? Do all persistant,hardworking,risk taking individuals become millionaires? No - so whatelse could be involved? Maybe there is a big dollop of luck involved along the way! - More than many would ever wish to acknowledge. As you correctly state - winners will consist of "a mixed group of the lucky and the skilled". So losers must consist of a mixed group of the unlucky and the unskilled. So, why are some of the skilled,winners, and others losers? Because they are luckier than their peers. What other reason could there be? Your final pargraph was interesting as well - this handful of winners you know. This group of winners had already been selected from a group of winners i.e a group you can see and define. What about the group you didn't see and therefore didn't select from? i.e the group of people displaying the same qualities as your friends but who didn't win. Why didn't they win as well? Maybe they just weren't as lucky. |
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I make a good living on Betfair and I agree with the opening poster that I'm lucky. In the early days I was almost certainly over-staking but even now when I bet a tiny fraction of my worth per bet I know that one day it is possible that my luck could run dry.
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We have more control over our betting destiny and other kinds of destinies than the fatalists will admit and less control than is claimed by people with some kind of Messiah complex.
Of course a lot of people taking positive expectation bets will lose, or not do as well as they should, long-term but wise bettors know this: they split up their bank into effectively lots of different people and fates and make sure they have enough lucky people or personalities to keep them winning in net terms. |
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JTG - if you have not read it already, you should read the book "outliers" - I can guarantee you will disagree with most of the content (as did I) but nevertheless it is quite an interesting read.
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When I staggered onto here, a little while ago, I really didn't want anyone to know what I was doing!
Unfortunately the cover was soon blown, as my daughter saw it here, and my work colleague, who first introduced me to the business, liked to talk about it in open office. I don't care that much, and in fact I feel pretty smug, to be honest! It's just the traditional stigma, attached to the business, that is hard to challenge. So if these bystanders ask how you did yesterday, and you reply honestly, that you lost, they will say "well what do you expect"? If you say that you won they will say "well you were lucky"! Well, like I said before, I really don't care! |
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I don't agree with JTG's assertion but his 14:03 post is a good one. Buffet will be telling us next that the UK government is made up of geniuses and it's no coincidence they all went to public schools. Fact is, if the successful all come from the same zoo it's probably an indication that they didn't get there by ability alone and they'll likely all be found out at the same time.
STRIKE, RIOT, KILL. NO PRISONERS. |
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Only a miniscule percentage of people on betfair are lucky. All the other 95%+ are just terribly unlucky. Simples.
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If a guy goes looking for Apples in October and find trees laden with fruit and others go looking in February is he lucky or unlucky ?
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The majority of winners on betfair are lucky. They're lucky the first exchange was set up by city boys who imported the morals of city sc.um to everyday betting.
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Sorry OP but that is bullshit.
I started to bet in 1990. Roughly : 1990-1995 i lost 5k a year 1995-2000 i broke even 2000-2005 i won 5k a year 2005-2010 i won 10k a year These are not the exact figures but the proportions are about right So you think i was unlucky in the 90's and became lucky in the 2000's ? No, the answer is faith, dedication, work, knowledge, experience |
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Maybe the OP should have been reversed ?.
Winners are unlucky as their day of inevitable reckoning is yet to come and so they are continually living on a knife edge. Whereas losers are lucky as their day has already happened and they can just relax and enjoy their life. Just as stoopid to say as the OP ? |
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A decent gambler will know whether they have an edge or not. If they can't define exactly why they win or lose (in a few words) they won't be winning long term, month in month out, year in year out.
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Trevh
What about if you know you have an edge ( that is winning over a long time after comm. at flat stakes) but don't understand or know why the edge persists ? Surely it isn't because you're just smarter or more industrious than the whole gambling community out there ? |
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Why is Djokovic n°1 ? Because he's smarter and more industrious than the other tennismen. Not because he's luckier.
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Is that truly a parallel to either the OP or my query on edges ?
Djoko is currently no.1 but it will not last that's for sure. |
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OK JTG, as you seem to be serious, here's some more info:
WB wrote this in 1984. A lot of people believed he was just lucky. There were tens of thousands of people like him, of course some would be extremely successful by luck alone! Once they started tracking him from that point onward, he continued to make money at a similarly improbable rate as before, and eventually it became silly to hold on to the assumption of perfectly efficient markets (although some still do even today). When I started out with Betfair, I was extremely sceptical of the possibilities of making money by betting, and was therefore extremely careful, making small consistent profits. As I became progressively more convinced of my edge, I bet larger, and my returns are closer to random now. There was a time when I made money 52 weeks in a row though. I've still made a profit every single quarter since 2007 on all my betting combined. |