Due for a Win
I’ve been waiting for Maria Konnikova’s poker book for a while, and it’s finally coming out soon. As far as I understand, it’s not actually about how to play the game. It’s about decision making, told through the story of a journalist learning how to play poker.
Because it’s coming out soon, there has been a lot of press about it, and one of the most interesting excerpts was in FiveThirtyEight. It’s the title that got me: “The Hard Truth Of Poker — And Life: You’re Never ‘Due’ For Good Cards.”
Oh.
And this is the paragraph where that title kicks in:
Doesn’t this mean I’m due for a break? I can’t possibly keep losing. It simply isn’t fair. Gambler’s fallacy — the faulty idea that probability has a memory. If you are on a bad streak, you are “due” for a win. And so I continue to bet when I should sit a few hands out.
That “faulty idea that probability has a memory”—that is the story of cycling. I spent so many journal entries explaining why the current month had to work. Because it had been X amount of months since I had started trying. Because it had been Y amount of months since my last loss. I know that’s not the way probability works, but that idea popped up in my brain (and still does when it comes to other situations): Weren’t we due for a win?
Though Konnikova says that we only think this way when we’re losing. We think we’re due for a win. She says people don’t think about how the next hand will lose when they’re on a roll. But… that hasn’t been true for me. I do spend a lot of time fearing that the next time won’t work.
Regardless, it’s both comforting and discomforting to know that “Nothing you do matters to the deck. The cards will fall how they may.” Sigh.
4 comments
I guess it’s a good thing my dad taught me how to play poker early…and blackjack…without money (or for my aunt’s pennies that we didn’t get to keep). I developed a pretty good feel for “the house always wins” before I ever really needed it.
My husband is a lucky poker player, which probably explains why he’s not very good at dealing with the unfairness of life. I can often just shrug and move on once I’ve decided I have no strategies left to play. He cannot.
The logical part of me knows this is true. But I think the universe does have a way of working out, many times. Not always. But enough that I like to hold out hope, even if it means sometimes I’m disappointed.
“That “faulty idea that probability has a memory.” I absolutely LOVE this. And you’re absolutely right about this being the story of cycling – I’m assuming you mean IVF cycles etc not bicycles, which was my first image! Also correct about people only thinking this way when they are losing. Because we (those who did not come out of this with a baby) have definitely noticed that those who have “won” instantly “know” why they have won, and credit themselves, their doctors, whatever they did differently that cycle, or simply their tenacity (the “hang in there, it WILL happen” mentality) rather than their privilege or simply random luck.
Like Beth’s logical self, I know that the universe is random. As Beth points out, it does work out for many of us in many ways (I know I am luckier than most people in this world, for example, despite not being able to have children, simply from the random fact of my birth in a particular time and country). But it doesn’t work out for equal numbers. Or more. It’s just easier to ignore that when it works in our favour.
It’s so hard for a rational and hopeful mind to truly grasp randomosity.
If that’s even a word. It’s so hard for MY mind to grasp it, anyway.