is LUCK random?

Decent presenter.

I think it comes in clusters

it also comes from hard work

Luck in running regarding punting tbh….

Life in general it’s the old saying what’s in front of you….

Seneca said,ITS PREPARATION MEETING OPPORTUNITY

"The harder you work, the luckier you get!" is a good saying but that is not really luck. It's the reward for hard work. In my lifetime, while I was standing there & watching, I've seen both incredible good luck & also incredible bad luck. Luck definitely exists. It can be a random event totally outside any expectation & reasoning.

'Better to be born lucky than born rich'.
Is the old proverb.

"the more i practice,the luckier i get"

Gary Player

"sometimes its better to be lucky than good"

Me when playing golf.

discipline and patience would be an important part of a gamblers LUCK.IMVHO.it might turn bad luck into good luck

discipline and patience is an important part of a gamblers strategy

The reward for hard work is success. The reward for practice is improvement. If luck can be explained, it is NOT luck. I was at a roulette table in Brighton many years ago. There were system players & heavy punters on the table & a little old granny putting her £1 on zero every roll. Zero landed 3 times in 5 spins wiping everyone out except granny who was over the moon. That was good luck for her & bad luck for everyone else. That is what luck does!

system players, heavy punters and little old grannies will all go bust if they play roulette for long enough.

They will unless they have infinite luck.

It's called the Devil's Wheel for a reason.

Is there such a thing as luck? Is a guy who backs a winner lucky and the guy who backs a loser unlucky.
Someone gets hit by a car people say wow you broke a leg but you were lucky you didn't get killed.
He was hit by a car and yet he was lucky  give over

Luck will only sit with you for a short period of time so use it wisely.

The fact that we (humans or any living entities) are here is luck.

Yeah, but is it good or bad luck?

Mick, the guy in your example had bad luck to be hit by the car, but also good luck to still be alive

i_agree_with_nick24 Aug 26 14:51Joined: 21 May 10 | Topic/replies: 14,048 | Blogger: i_agree_with_nick's blog
It's called the Devil's Wheel for a reason.

That's just because the numbers from 1 to 36 when all added together = 666

While obviously you can't win in the long term - In reality (assuming there is only one zero on the wheel), the approx 102.7% book you are betting into is a better "value" bet than the vast majority of bets that are available from the mainstream gambling industry.

So the maths will actually only kill you very, very slowly - but obviously frequency of play (and addiction) are the issue for most players!

its amazing that they built Las Vegas on a 2.7% overround. Bookies at York had a 140% overround in some races. Imagine what they could build with that.

Luck is not totally random - I often think im an unlucky punter and bad things happen to my bets [DQs, falling at the last, poor jocks, trainers like Mullins and Elliott messing about] but probably thats just lkife.  However when i occasionally get a run of good luck [never that long] I should know bad luck and losses will quickly ensue UNLESS i try and reduce stakes, take a break, or try to be ultra-sensible!It's taking me a long while to learn this lesson.

Ask someone who has a general positive outlook on life if they are lucky or unlucky and they will say lucky....and vice versa.

Not true Mr Tiger. Look at the over round on some inside bets on craps. Craps is a very popular game in Vegas & the roulette wheel has double zeros not one zero.

York races probably have only approx 120 "events/markets" in a year.

I'd hazard a guess that just one roulette wheel (even if only in use for 12 hours/day) could manage about 130,000 "events/markets" in a year!

No such thing as luck. There are just things that happen. Whether those events elicit favourable or unfavourable emotions is irrelevant. What we feel is real, but we reach for a crutch to explain things that require no explanation.

The real point is whether we can influence the things that happen, and the famous Gary Player quote is just a clever way of saying the same thing.

Everyone must make up their own minds. I was sceptical that luck existed until I witnessed the 2 events I mentioned previously. I won't reveal what they were.

There are a few ted talks on you tube on how to improve your LUCK.

Make your own luck!

There is no such thing as LUCK, except in the mind of the beholder

Did a lucky 15 once with 4 horses with blue in the name

they all won.

now thats luck

It says on you tube to improve your LUCK,step out of your comfort zone a take a chance.

So- if you work hard, practice effectively buy a ticket you'll win top prize in Euro millions!

There has to be a way to improve your LUCK.some people are very lucky.There must be some secret

Some people buy a lucky charm,and will swear it brings them LUCK.

Some go into a caravan smelling of urine to get the lines on their hands checked…..

if you make a mistake placing a bet ,that ends up copping is that LUCKY or a mistake you didnt end up paying the price for ?

Luck is MOSTLY the residue pf hard work...but niot always. Some are just plain lucky...but rarely admit to it.

gary player quote and others copying it is rubbish, in golf hitting someone in gallery bouncing on to green,stopping a ball going out of bound,hitting sprinkler heads, cart paths etc is nothing to do with practicing harder,if the saying were true the more you practice the less galleries,prinkler head,cart ath you should be hitting to get lucky,and vica versa the more sprinkler heads,cartpaths,galleries etc you hit becaue you practice less the more your going to benefit/get lucky,just %,s not LUCK, like top teams getting lucky with PENS,its not luck its %, the more times you get the ball in the box the more pens your going to get,ITS NOT LUCK, its %,s and probabilities,raffles,lottery etc are luck and you increase your chances of been lucky by the amount of TKTS you buy

AI says LUCK is not random

there are occasions when pure luck prevails-such as a lottery ticket-but many people who are described as lucky might behave differently from the herd. Either more willing to take a chance or more careful to avoid danger. I would say that I feel lucky when I find something that I thought I had lost but that is usually because I am careful to protect my property and it usually turns up down the side of my chair or what ever. I also try to keep all valuables in zipped pockets when away from home. I suppose I was luckier than most as a racehorse owner although I did have a couple of duds. The last 4 horses that I owned a part of won 15 races between them and none were very expensive.

jut proving the oint again its more to do with %,/probabilities than luck the more horses you own the more chance of having a winner,more chance of a getting a half  decent horse, if you give say kevin ryan 200 grand to buy a horse he,ll attempt to buy a horse he thinks should be competing in the 200 grand grade,give same 200 grand to a lower brade trainer ak her to buy you 5 or 6 horses,who do you think you,ll have more supposed  luck with ?

Gary Player holed a bunker shot and someone said that was lucky. Player said the more i practice the luckier i get.What Gary Player meant was that because he practiced alot, he was good at it, and so it wasnt luck at all,it was skill.

so the person calling him LUCKY was wrong,it was a  skill,but all the forms of LUCK you can benefit from or be UNLUCKY from in golf have nothing to do with the amount of practice you do,so GARY PLAYERS remark has been hijacked over the yrs and used in the wrong context

Luck is a human interpretation of randomness.

If say 10 million humans start share trading  -  a few will end up making millions maybe billions.  Are those better traders than the rest , or the 'lucky' ones that rise to the top based on pure chance ? With a big enough starting group some will make huge profits based on luck alone.

If enough Grannies sit down and play zero on roulette , the maths dictates that a small number must win big. The rest  just go home without a story to sell.  Imagine the Grannies weren't playing roulette but picking shares at random ?  The only Grannies you would ever hear about are  the small number that make huge profits.

i,d call the breaks.rules SPEITH benefited from when winning his oen were good luck/break,compared to the bad breaks SAM BURNS/dusty got in USA open,nothing to do with the amount of hard work/practice ant of them did or didnt do

The main point is that if AI is correct and LUCK in not random,a guy has to engineer his own LUCK.
iN other words,ITS  YOUR OWN FAULT IF YOU ARE NOT LUCKY.

Successful people tend to believe it's all down to hard work etc

Unsuccessful people tend to believe they are the unlucky ones.

They are probably both wrong.

https://scienceinsights.org/is-luck-real-scientifically-heres-what-research-...

A mate slid a £500 chip into the third column but edged a bit to far and it ended up on 36 and "no more bets."

£18K in his bin. He probably done it all back though I would have thought.
I hate roulette personally.

So, was Dave Nevsion unlucky all those years ago when he needed that winner at Taunton (?) over the jumps to give hima huge acca - and the jockey then slipped off on the run-in?

Now, whether the jock slipped on accident or on purpose does not matter in Nevsion's case. He was just plain unlucky.

Good luck or bad luck does happen at random, but anyone can increase their chances of taking advanatge of good luck by hard work or gaianing a better knowledge than others. They might then be labelled lucky, but ther luck isn't the same as the pure chance of winning the lottery.

Terry Ramsden, a hero of the 1980's to many who watched his rise to the top is a great example.

He made a huge fortune through having built up an initmate knowledge of the Japanese bond and stock markets from early on in his working life. But even he had no idea those markets would explode upwards in the early to mid-1980's due to a combinatiopn of events and some very unusual fiscal policy from the Japanses governments.

Ramsden was in the right place at the right time, and with better knowledge than almost anyone else had.

Thus, his hard work earlier in life paid off - but he could have equally as well have guilt up knowhedge of the markets in another country and then would not have made the fortune he did. He also took advantage of his knowledge and luck by taking on many highly geared postions. So, a good example of someone having the right knowledge when luck smiled upon them and then having the gonads to reap it.

Now, we know he lost the lot but that is another discussion.

My point is that luck is random, but luck comes more to those who have put in the hard yards previously and are well equipped to take advantage when things do fall their way.

To end, here is another observation. Younger gamblers have not yet built up the wisodm to appreciate any of this. They tend to think it is either luck OR hard work / skill. But those of us who have been around the block a few times know that, in most cases but not all, it is a combniation of both that sees people succeed.

great post. from The Knight,post of the week,take a bow sir.

i remember reading a "book", last time in hmp
in i cant remember to save my life the name of it
either, it was either on about luck n randomness, sure
must of been written by a speptic, but what i do remember
from it was an exapmple of i think they was twins but played
baseball, both equally as good as each other on the numbers n stuff
but certain events happened ....n two totaly diiferent outcomes....
its like soccer, hit the post/bar a thousandstimes or it gets lucky
n its underside n ends up in the back of the net.....

Unfortunate is a better word in horse racing tbh….

The Dave Nevison malarkey is up there with the most unfortunate thing to happen…..

surely any coach, bo,mentor etc,etc advise to anybody would be ,the harder you work the less luck you need, never looked at hi bet in detail but maynr nevo had used up all hi luck in earlier winner and other backing different horses in those race,s  might have thought they were unlucky, all heled ell the book,which wa the main thing a far a nevo was concerned .nevo wouldnt have swapped hi luck on that horse for the luck he had working in the city at the right time

Do you need luck to win a poker tournament ?

Yes of course you do - but a good player will need less luck to win it than a bad player.

Recognising and remembering the luck is another matter.  Oh how they moan when they get knocked out by a guy hitting  his flush on the river  at a crucial stage on the final table , but completely forget about the two races they won an hour earlier to get their chips in the place.

Aug 25, 2026 -- 10:52PM, brassneck wrote:

great post. from The Knight,post of the week,take a bow sir.

By the dictionary definition, it was lucky - I give you that. But calling what happened in the Japanese markets "luck", whether or not Ramsden was well placed to take advantage, has no meaning beyond that definition.
What matters here is not to call up a wider definition, implying the objective existence of a natural phenomenon; an abstract quality or characteristic inherent in the beneficiary's person, when it's actually just "things that happen".
Whenever those things have favourable consequences (and the opposite in the case of an absence of luck), as a species, we reach for an explanation where none exists, or is required.
"Fortuitous" is a better definition as it doesn't carry a perception of being predestined in the person affected.