4 ms·
>Poker is a combination of luck and skill Luck follows (or at least positively correlates) with skill :) 30+ years ago in our company of friends in the univers
by trhway 2y ago
>Poker is a combination of luck and skill
Luck follows (or at least positively correlates) with skill :) 30+ years ago in our company of friends in the university dormitories we had a guy who had the card deck handling skills of a major illusionist (and those skills were naturally a source of significant income for him). The guy was also tremendously lucky - well beside mere being alive and without broken bones while applying his skills for income :) - in particular once he won an amount enough to buy 1-bdrm apt in St.Petersburg back then on a scratch lottery ticket that he bought at a random place on our way while we were walking to some business meeting in a city that we just arrived that morning. If it were a skillful illusion, then it was way beyond anything i've heard or seen before :)
- interroboink 2y agoI'm not sure I follow... You feel that his skills as an illusionist somehow helped him win on that scratch lottery ticket?
- eschneider 2y agoI used to be the absolute BEST at scratch lottery tickets. OTOH, "every ticket a winner" used to be a thing, and I had free access to an MRI machine at the time. Sometimes, you make your own luck...
- WalterBright 2y agoI thought the people that administer the lottery keep track of the winners, and investigate any statistically anomalous winners.
- eschneider 2y agoYou may have noticed that "every ticket a winner" scratch cards are no longer a thing.
- WalterBright 2y agoLOL, thanks for pointing that out! I didn't because I don't play the lottery, as lotteries are for losers.
- eschneider 2y agoLotteries are for losers, but scratch tickets are interesting crypto problems. Winning tickets are printed algorithmically and (at least around here) serial numbered. Given past winning ticket numbers (available via FOIA request, ask me how I know...) it's possible to determine winning serial numbers in the future. (At least in states that don't rotate their pseudorandom seeds, and some...don't.) Finding the winning tickets out in the world such that you can get away with buying just them is a harder problem, as they're normally sold 'in order', and going around THAT is the thing that gets your winning ticket DQ'd. There's always something nice about "free money", and it's achievable here, but an honest job is less work.