London. 2012.
I first got attracted to the casino near Leicester Square because the slot machine games were easy on the eyes. Good music, easy-on-the-eyes pictures of pharaohs, pyramids, and what not. Most of all, this place was lucky for me. My first time here, I walked in with a 20 and walked out with enough to buy an iPad.
I walked in and received chips for a couple hundred quid. The sound of the ball rolling on the roulette table was attractive enough to ignore all the stink and smoke of old Chinese guys sitting there since morning trying to beat the house. I saw the screen. The last 5 numbers were odd. Dare I bet on an even number?
Things had changed since that iPad purchase two years earlier. Now I had read up tons of websites about how the house always wins, refused to believe that and fought with Microsoft Excel to try to prove it. I had learnt how games like roulette, and the slot machine were just impossible to beat the house at, and the only hope was either poker or blackjack. And I had read how it was far more optimistic to play in the markets instead of playing in a casino.
And yet here I was. In 2 years, I had blown myself up enough times doubling down again and again on the roulette table. And yet, unbelievably, I had lost more money trading. Which is probably why I kept coming back to the casino. Sure enough, as always, my two hundred pounds ran out, and I was in dire danger of not being able to afford my cab to the airport. That's when I walked out.
If there was a commercial for gambler's fallacy, I'd be hired as director, cast and scriptwriter all in one. Everything except the producer who gets paid for the commercial. You can imagine scenes in front of a brokerage account, a roulette table, a slot machine - guy with eyes brimming with perennial optimism, blowing up hard earned money (well , not so hard earned). Hoping for some mathematical god to appear out of thin air, and bless him with unimaginable riches. Except, cut to the present, it is not a god that appears. It is the hard, cold, tight slap of the law of averages - which needs no God to preserve it.
I first got attracted to the casino near Leicester Square because the slot machine games were easy on the eyes. Good music, easy-on-the-eyes pictures of pharaohs, pyramids, and what not. Most of all, this place was lucky for me. My first time here, I walked in with a 20 and walked out with enough to buy an iPad.
I walked in and received chips for a couple hundred quid. The sound of the ball rolling on the roulette table was attractive enough to ignore all the stink and smoke of old Chinese guys sitting there since morning trying to beat the house. I saw the screen. The last 5 numbers were odd. Dare I bet on an even number?
Things had changed since that iPad purchase two years earlier. Now I had read up tons of websites about how the house always wins, refused to believe that and fought with Microsoft Excel to try to prove it. I had learnt how games like roulette, and the slot machine were just impossible to beat the house at, and the only hope was either poker or blackjack. And I had read how it was far more optimistic to play in the markets instead of playing in a casino.
And yet here I was. In 2 years, I had blown myself up enough times doubling down again and again on the roulette table. And yet, unbelievably, I had lost more money trading. Which is probably why I kept coming back to the casino. Sure enough, as always, my two hundred pounds ran out, and I was in dire danger of not being able to afford my cab to the airport. That's when I walked out.
If there was a commercial for gambler's fallacy, I'd be hired as director, cast and scriptwriter all in one. Everything except the producer who gets paid for the commercial. You can imagine scenes in front of a brokerage account, a roulette table, a slot machine - guy with eyes brimming with perennial optimism, blowing up hard earned money (well , not so hard earned). Hoping for some mathematical god to appear out of thin air, and bless him with unimaginable riches. Except, cut to the present, it is not a god that appears. It is the hard, cold, tight slap of the law of averages - which needs no God to preserve it.
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