Game of chance

“ Accidental circumstances will sometimes give a player overwhelming advantages in the play, of which none but he are aware; and who shall say that he will not avail himself of the opportunity which chance has thrown in his way? Against this sort of thing, however, there is no other safeguard than the watchfulness of the players. Where, then, is the 'game,' the amusement, if one has to play, armed at all points, as it were, and living in dread of pickpockets? ”

“ But the way of thinking which regards war as a game of chance, where the stakes are temporal gain or loss, and which fixes the amount to be staked on the cards even before it begins the game—such a way of thinking is defeated even by a whim. ”

“ It is only where the stakes are small that the leisurely players, idly fingering the fallen cards, return in fancy to certain points—to this trick trumped or that chance missed, playing the game over again. But when the result is great it overshadows the game, and all men's thoughts fly to speculation on the future. How will the loser meet his loss? ”

“ An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table. ”

“ You’re getting to think of nothing but roulette. You used to go for long walks, spend your time in the open air; now you’re either in the Rooms or working over permanencies. In the end you’ll lose everything.”
“Nonsense. I tell you I understand the game now. I can get my living at it. It only needs prudence, patience, judgment. A man can start with five francs and win a fortune. The great mass of the people are fools. They play anyhow. But I tell you it takes brains to play that game. There are the laws of chance, the calculation of probabilities.... Oh, I know I can win. ”

“ If by chance he should win, there are two chances to one that the gambler will get it all back and more too, at the next sitting. People say, "I will try it once more, and I am sure to win this time, and if I do I will quit the game forever." But the forever never comes. ”

“ The way we play the Game of Life today is similar to playing poker. We keep a straight face and play the cards tight to our chest. But what would happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would cease to be a game of strategy, and become a game of pure chance. ”

“ If the odds are so much against the insane gambler who, secure in an infallible system, hastens to place his foot on the neck of chance in what is called a "square" game, how must he inevitably fare in a "skin" operation. ”

“ There are some in which chance is predominant—as poker, for example, or the new game of bluff, so popular in America, where so much depends on the dealing, and the play is not so much a calculation as an attempt to exhaust one’s opponent.... The stronger games, however, such as whist, Boston, l’hombre, solitaire, piquet, Skat, euchre, etc., depend on the sustained influence of both chance and calculation. ”

“ He that does it twenty times successively, and without failing, gains the match, or party, and he that misses gets a black stroke on his forehead for every time he misses. Another boy’s play is a game of chance, like cards or dice ”

“ On the other hand the proportion of heads to tails in the case of the thousand throws will be very much nearer to unity, in most cases, than when we only took ten. In other words, the longer a game of chance continues the larger are the spells and runs of luck in themselves, but the less their relative proportions to the whole amounts involved. ”

“ It was a stiff game, a big game even for Johnny's where the stakes were always high. ` I have seen honest men win up into four figures between sunset and dawn, and sometimes they did it in spite of all I could do. Even a gambler who uses art instead of science can't dictate to luck: he can only increase his percentage, or chance of winning. ”

“ With these smaller operations for smaller gains, a contest of skill now takes place between the two generals; but as it is impossible in war to shut out chance, and consequently good luck, therefore this contest will never be otherwise than a game. In the meantime, here arise two other questions, that is, whether in this manœuvring, chance will not have a smaller, and superior intelligence a greater, share in the decision, than where all concentrates itself into one single great act. ”

“ When the game is seemingly lost, take the one chance of finding in your partner's hand the cards that will save it.
It is surprising how often a desperate expedient will overcome a desperate situation.
To force luck is to attempt to make it—a most idle task.
Human nature tempts mortals to lose more than they can win, sometimes more than they can afford. ”

“ The game calls our attention to the influence of chance in war, and to the desirability of our recognizing that influence and endeavoring to eliminate it, when reasoning out the desirability or undesirability of a certain weapon or a certain method. Of course, every thoughtful person realizes that few effects in life are due to one cause only, and that most effects are due to a combination of many causes ”

“ Games of chance—even in the long-ago sixties—were rarely indulged in in the ante-room, which was reserved exclusively for solemn whist for nominal stakes, where the players bottled up trumps, misdealt, and revoked, regardless of all the canons of the game. ”

“ Since there is an equal chance of gain and loss, if you had only to gain two lives for one, you might still wager. But were there three of them to gain, you would have to play, since needs must that you play, and you would be imprudent, since you must play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where the chances of loss or gain are even. ”

“ But I believe, though it is so much less a thing of chance than science or skill, eager players pass whole nights in marching and countermarching their men and check-mating a successful adversary, supposing that at a certain point of the game, they had determined upon making a particular move instead of the one which they actually did make. ”

“ Wherever there are large numbers of objects, 164having a tendency to retain certain characters unaltered, this tendency, however, not being absolute but giving room for chance variations, then, if the amount of variation is absolutely limited in certain directions by the destruction of everything which reaches those limits, there will be a gradual tendency to change in directions of departure from them. Thus, if a million players sit down to bet at an even game, since one after another will get ruined, the average wealth of those who remain will perpetually increase. ”

“ You see salt spilt, hear death-watches—owls hoot—dogs howl, and despise the omen—you are above it. But yet let me ask you, an enlightened philosopher—Whether you are above choice of seats at whist? Whether you 89 have not really believed that your chance for winning was much bettered by your taking the fortunate chairs, and of course obliging your adversaries to sit, not in those of the scornful, but of the losers? When you quit the game on a run of ill luck, what is it but declaring your belief that the games already played have an influence upon those which are to come? ”

“ For this a stick is fixed among the folds of a tightly wrapped cord, and the game is won or lost435 according as it is or is not successfully concealed.436 The various games of cards afford by far the most important instances211 of play with chance, and their name is legion. We have not time even to glance at such games as faro, lansquenet, rouge et noir, trente et quarante, etc., except to say that they all depend on a combination of reason with chance, and so more speedily put an end to suspense as to who is the victor than do purely chance plays. ”

“ One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it. ”

“ Then said Fate to Chance: “Let us play our old game again.” And they played it again together, using the gods as pieces, as they had played it oft before. So that those things which have been shall all be again, and under the same bank in the same land a sudden glare of sunlight on the same spring day shall bring the same daffodil to bloom once more and the same child shall pick it, and not regretted shall be the billion years that fell between. And the same old faces shall be seen again, yet not bereaved of their familiar haunts. ”

“ Not one in a thousand is left unblighted! You have nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against you, and one for you; and will you go on? If a disease should stalk through the town, devouring whole families, and sparing not one in five hundred, would you lie down under it quietly because you have one chance in five hundred? ”

“ Some teach us how to be learned, others how to be rich, and others, again, how to be lucky. Gamblers have their doctrine of chances and runs of luck. Thus, if a particular number or card wins twice or thrice in succession, the chances are in favor of its winning once or twice more.
Chance is a superstition; there is no such thing as accident, no deviation from the inexorable laws of nature, any more than there is a veritable war-god, weather-god, or Great Cloud Manipulator. ”

“ In the mysterious lottery of life there is no denying the presence of an element known as Chance, defying all calculation, and turning the balance to success or failure. “The race,” as they all knew, “was not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” ”

“ Each event or contingency must, of course, be uncertain, or, at all events, unknown to the parties, that is, it represents a chance, and where the chances are agreed to be uneven the inequality is represented by odds. ”

“ The wonderful enchainments of the chances alternate in the most marvellous variety; the influence of the Powers which govern the issue displays itself, so that, inspired by this, our spirits stretch their wings in an attempt to reach that darksome realm, that mysterious laboratory, where the Power in question works, and there see it working. I knew a man once who used to sit alone in his room for days and nights keeping banque, and staking against himself. That man, I consider, was a proper player. Others have only the gain in view, and look upon the game as a means of winning money quickly. ”

“ In chance games proper, however, the contestants do not attack one another directly, but seek to conquer by the better solution of some problem, the point of departure from other rivalries being that the reward of solution, at least in games of pure chance, is entirely accidental, and not dependent on the player’s strength or skill. We will now attempt to review the more important phenomena connected with such games, and later study the question in its psychological bearings. ”

“ If we play on and on and do not reach it, we inevitably suspect that something is the matter with the dice, i.e., that they have been loaded, that pure chance does not rule. So of each and every combination—we are bound to throw them all, if we take sufficient time, and there has been no tampering with the dice. But after we have thrown all the combinations, what else is there for us to do, if we go on playing, but to throw the old ones over again? The recurrence of the old ones is of strict necessity—it is chance and necessity in one. ”

“ Every failure means “out,” and then your opponent has his turn. The winner is the one who gets through first. Such is the game as I remember it, but I have an uneasy suspicion that I have missed something out. ”

“ He had lost, he felt satisfied, not for want of skill in playing his game, but because the game of life was an unfair one, in which the cards were packed, and all the trumps dealt to one man, while all the low, poor, insignificant, valueless bits of pasteboard were left for another, in which from birth all the odds were against one player, while the stakes were thrust, nolens volens, into his opponent’s hand. ”

“ In applying the doctrine of chances to that subject in connexion with which it was invented—games of chance,—the principles of what has been happily termed ‘moral arithmetic’ must not be forgotten. Not only would it be difficult for a gamester to find an antagonist on terms, as to fortune and needs, precisely equal, but also it is impossible that with such an equality the advantage of a considerable gain should balance the harm of a serious loss. ”

“ But, when the players have been at it for some time, without rest or cessation, they very often forget all about their calculations, and simply trust to chance. Their vaunted science disappears before what they are pleased to call their inspirations, and, for that very reason, the greater part of their winnings disappears, too. ”

“ It was the jargon of the professional gambler who keeps up a running dialogue with the cards as they slip through his hands, sometimes growling, sometimes only breathing hard, as they alternately smile upon him or mock him with impish grimaces.
The contest with Chance is one of the maddest and fiercest battles in which the human mind ever engages. Chance, which is neither more nor less than an incessant and incalculable contradiction of facts, is never tired out; we can never meet her face to face, and to defy her is folly. ”

“ Why take the chance? for even if you discover no taste for it, you will find that there is nothing in it, after all. Why this hazard of your powers, just to find out whether you can resist? It is a one-sided gamble, is it not? Even fools refuse to play when they know that the dice may be loaded. ”