The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-06-04

does the guessing to leave the game
loser.
1t is hard to find any mathematical
foundation whatsoever for this supersti-
ton, but it is one of the most common
superstitions of all. 1t may be explained
by the ordinary limits of individual re-
sources which restricts the average
players loss to a smaller sum than the
possible amount of money he may win.
When he gets broke" he must cease to
play, and in the ups and downs Of play it
is more likely that he will lose the money
that he has with him than win the bank
much larger roll.
1t is evident that if two men sit down
to match dice for dollars, one with a
capital of 500 and the other with a
capital of $40 that the chances are largely
in favor of the man with the 500 getting
the other mans $40 if the matching is
continued until such time as all the money
on the table is won by one man. Of course
every match is even in its chances. Every
time the two men put up their dollars
these chances are mathematically even,
but it would require a preponderance of
100 winnings for the $40 man to get the
other man S money, while 1t would require
only preponderance of ten winnings for
the 500 man to get all the money of the
$40 man. AS the odds against run in
crease in more than arithmetical ratio, it
is more than a ten-to-one chance in favor
of the 500 man. OF course, there is a
possibility of the $40 man winning the
800, but the probability of his own stake
being exhausted first is much greater.
1t is thus feature of gambling that
the player must more often stop with a
loss than with gain. The man who
buys a $50 stack of chips in gambling
house will have to stop when he has lost
ba haG No n
more, while he will not have to stop with
a $50 winning. Aside from the percent
| age against him in the game there is that
quality of human nature which makes a
man want to stop a big winner, and so
| continue to play in luck with the chance
that it will turn and sweep his capital
out of sight If it were an even chance
that he would win or lose, which it is not
in a gambling house, for the mathemat-
ical odds are in favor of the gam
bier, still the odds are that the man who
plays against an even game will lose $50
before he wins ISL. The odds are still
greater in geometrical ratio that he will
lose the $50 before he wins 500. Few
men are satisfied with a small winning or
with winning even their stake. They go
on betting, and unless they have eXtraor-
binary luck, which keeps up until they get
all the money the bank has, they will lose
everything they put up.
Another gambling superstition is a be-
lief in the runs of luck and that it is a
mistake for men to fight against their
luck. This refers to the superstition pre-
viously mentioned that things run in Sc
uuences, and that bad luck and good luck
have their sway, and that the roulette
balls or the cards will fall according to
the run of luck a man is in. With this
belief comes the gambler axiom, Crowd
your good luck and stop on your bad
luck In other words, increase your
bets when you are in good luck, and di-
minish them when YOU are in bad luck.
There is an assumption in this that a man
can tell beforehand what luck he is in,
and regulate his conduct accordingly.
But though it is easy for any man looking
back over his playing to see that he has
been in bad luck or in good luck, there is
no scientific way to determine beforehand
how long either kind of luck is going to
last, and how it will affect him.
The conditions of the game include GER
| tain mathematical odds and percentages
which every man knows or can readily
calculate. The tendency of human nature
is to increase wagers for series of losses
| and not to increase them in like manner
for series of winnings. There is also a
| tendency to bet that CONTINUED sequence
will break on the next kturn. The man
who is running the game does no guessing
at all He accepts all bets on the board
! as they stand at the time of the Nlrn or