Tuesday, November 13, 2007

In news stories about gambling, everyone loves a winner




Luck struck twice for a couple from Caledon, Ont., in just one hour after they won a casino jackpot then a lottery jackpot. Anthony and Antonietta Marrocco won $13,000 at Casino Rama in Orillia, Ont., Saturday night. After that, Antonietta Marrocco predicted their luck would continue and told her husband they would win the lottery.
An hour later, the winning numbers for the $37-million Lotto 6/49 jackpot were drawn - and the Marroccos held one of two winning tickets.
That's more than $18.5 million in winnings for the couple, who own a construction company.
The Marroccos say with the money they will pay off debts, take care of their four children and three grandchildren and consider taking a holiday.


You gotta love how what passes for the mainstream media love to dote on these stories.


Of course, this is classic Survivor Bias. All we see is the lucky winners, we never stop to think about the thousands of other gamblers who weren't so lucky. We also don't stop to think about how much the couple in the article had to spend over time in the casino (one can infer that this might be a regular pastime for them) before they won that pot.


I used to say that gambling was the triumph of optimism over experience. That is, until a friend described gambling as "flushing a $100 bill down the toilet, and staring at the bowl, waiting for $300 to float back up."


Good for them, but don't go expecting that it will happen for you, too.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

How serendipitous. This issue was the subject of my most recent post. Hang a left - or right, depending on your stripe - and check it out at a musings.

As I've opined before, we've gone well beyond the Doobie Brothers album title of the '70's - "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits". Now it's "What Were Once Habits Are Now Revenue Streams".

Just one more question, with the Turks bombing the snot out of "deserted" Kurdish towns in northern Iraq as only one example, why is this even getting reported as news?

The Funky Western Civilization - hopelessly lost, but making GREAT time!