The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-03-17
MATURITY OF THE CHANCE
ITS RATIFICATION TO LITE INSUR-
 ISCE.
Gamblers Who Have Profted by It.
 Young Saxon Nobleman's R"mnrk~ole
 Success Ut Baden Baden.

| Success Ut Bndcn- inden.
 In some recent articles in The Sun at
 tention has been directed to what IS
 called the maturity of the chance Ill
 games of hazard and in the racing or | horses. In regard to the latter the con-
 clusion is decidedly in favor of betting
 founded upon accurate study of the law
 of matured chances rather than upon
 the assumption of the force of indivldu-
 al luck In principle the maturity or
 the chance signifies that the oftener the
 same combination or event has occurred
 or arrived in succession the nearer we
 are to the certainty that it will not re-
 cur again in the immediate future. In
 some cases the odds against it are d
 hundred to enc or less; or thousands or
 hundreds of thousands, or millions to
 one, and in some instances, since the
 appearance of man on the earth, tl1e
 matured chance of the occurrence of a given event has not yet arrived.
 This law of mathematical probabilities
 may be applied to all incidents of life
 in which risk or accident is q factor. A conspicuous example of the principle is found in life insurance, where through study of vital statistics involving hun dreds of thousands of lives a system of
 wagers on longevity Is made a certain
 and profitable business. When it comes, however, to its application to games or hazard, no man has as yet been able to
 estimate the matured chance in any play in which successive turns of carl p-p te Of a 1i, oh o dar a 1tfIT is required Buffon the naturalist and mathematician, attempted it by throw ing a perfectly balanced coin as evenly
 as he was able. He made several thou sands casts in the endeavor to throw
 heads ten times in succession. He threw
 heads nine times suceessively, but never
 ten. He then repeated the experiment.
 with the same number of casts as Ion
 the first occasion, when he not only
 threw ten heads several times in sue
 cession, but also eleven. This bunch
 ing" Is the despair of calculators of
 mathematical probabilities in games of hazard It makes it impossible to for mulate any trustworthy rule of compu
 taticn of matured chances open to sure and practical application. It may be
 
 all writers on the subject to discrimin- ate in gambling transactions between individual luck or vein and the mauured chances of the game.
 In a series of articles entitled Tot teries. Luck, Chance and Gambling Sys- tems' now in course of publication in the Pal Mall Magazine in the issue for January, 1900, the author states a case to illustrate his theory of luck He pre- sumes that on the 10th of June, 1877. the population of the United Kingdom amounta to 33554, 432 persons and that 1t is preserved intact into the year 1901 That is, there shall be no births or deathsy or causes of decrease or increase of the population during that period On the 30th of June, 1877, all of the 33,- 554, 432 persons participate in a lottery. each to have one share The conditions are that the prizes are to number one half of the persons who enter the lot tery and that the losere are to retire af- ter that drawing and the winners, 1s,- 777216 are to take a chance in the lot tery for 1878; the losers to retire as in the first instance, leaving S,3SS eos win ners to enter for the lottery for 1879. The result of this third event is that 4,194,30 persons join the ranks of he losers in the year 1S77-7S and ABA 30f persons, all of whom have already had three consecutive wins are eligible for the lottery of 1880 Tn 1884 when the eighth event is decided only 131 ,072 per- sons are left to participate in future lotteries, and in 1890 there remain only GAS winners out of the original 1klmber that had tickets in the first drawing. In 1897 there remained sixteen winners, while in 1901 there will be left only one person who shall have unbroken luck for twenty-five consecutive years.
 In so far as the result of the various of thle lottery is concerned, it is a mathematical certainty that but one person of the original 33,554 ,432 shall secure the sole prize at the twenty fifth drawing Therefore the au- thor designates him as the penultimately lucky one out of the original number that entered the competition. A greater example of luck applied in this case would have been for one man to select the final winner on q wager out of the 33, ,554 432 persons who had taken tickets in the lottery on the 30th of June, 1877. Still more interesting would it have been had the author of the article named the odds that ehould have been allowed on such q wager. This is a mathematical that is open for solution to the sharp "boollies' who are ready to bet or lay odds on any event of which man under present conditions has 
 The subjoned example will be still more comforting to those who have inn plicit belief in luck: neither will it dis the few philosophical believers | in the theory of the maturity of the chance for they will contend that that n merely q remarkable instance of the chance of the individual being coinci- dent with a possible, af extraordinary, of matured chances of the | event.
 When Baden Baden was the great gambling centre of Europe q young Sax on nobleman made his appearance there | and commenced his career at the tables by stalking very small sums, but by the l most extraordinary luck-this word is | leed without prejudice to the theory of | he maturity of the chance che was able | -o increase his capital to 1uch an extent hat he rarely staked under the maxi | mum and almost always won. His suc- | 'ess was so remarkable that the dealers 1 pr croupiers offered him a large sum to | lbsent himself from the tables On the ! other hand, he was offered better tarms