Nature reminds us that we are a small part of something vast, complex, ever-evolving and infinitely precious. It reminds us that, as part of this system, we are precious, too. Yet all around us is. Taking risks is a habit and part of human nature, but getting in the habit of taking risks all the time, especially for material gain or loss can be a very destructive thing to do. Gambling does not only waste common sense and the mind, but it also makes people unable to control their emotions.
We have picked nine of our favorite gambling quotes and listed them below, along with some details about the people that made them and our take on what they mean. These quotes stand out for us as they either contain excellent advice or are great reflections of what gambling is all about.
This is a quote from Baltasar Gracián y Morales, a 17th century philosopher. We like it because, several hundred years later, it remains one of the single best pieces of gambling advice. If you can learn to quit when you are ahead, then you have an excellent chance of being a successful gambler.
This is an Irish proverb which highlights one of the biggest mistakes a gambler can make: chasing losses. In the same way that you have to know when to quit when you are ahead, there’s also a time to cut your losses and quit.
For many gamblers, this quote neatly sums why they gamble. It’s not just about the money itself, it’s the joy of winning it. The quote was from the movie The Color of Money, said by the character Fast Eddie Felson – played by Paul Newman.
Andrew Beyer highlighted one of the biggest failings of gamblers in this quote: letting emotions cloud judgment. Beyer was an expert on horse racing betting, writing four books on the subject. He also designed the Beyer Speed Figure, a system for rating Thoroughbred racehorses.
The origins of this proverb aren’t entirely clear. It’s a simple statement but entirely true. If a horse you have bet on wins, you’ll always wish you had bet more on it. The premise applies to any form of gambling.
Really, this quote could apply to life in general. It was actually made in the context of poker, by Steve Badger. Badger owned one of the first, and best, websites dedicated to educating poker players. In this quote he’s pointing out that if you think you know it all you are sadly mistaken.
This is from poker player V. P. Pappy. We could pick a number of quotes from him as he’s made several great ones, but this is probably our favorite in terms of the advice it contains. He is making the excellent point that good money management is absolutely essential to successful gambling.
Gambling Human Nature Definition
This quote is from the James Bond book (and movie) Casino Royale, written by Ian Fleming. It emphasizes a mistake that many gamblers make: blaming bad luck instead of trying to work if they made a bad play or bet.
Something of a tongue in cheek quote this one, from Jack Yelton. He is essentially highlighting the fact that you are likely to lose money playing casino games. He’s right of course; the house does have an edge over the long term.
That doesn’t mean that casino games should be avoided at all costs, as they are great fun and it’s possible to win money if you get lucky. It’s just important to recognize that the odds are ultimately against you.
Why is that some people treat the dumbest bet in the world as genius when it hits? It’s not genius, obviously, but confusing skill and luck is a common mistake made by gamblers and investors alike. It’s one of many that arise when human nature and gambling collide.
When the House has the advantage, like in most games of chance, winning has nothing to do with brilliance. It’s almost always a bad decision saved by dumb luck. Yet, hindsight bias spares us from being honest with ourselves.
Picture the person who hits on 17 at blackjack and catches a 4. Or another who goes on an amazing run picking numbers playing roulette. It’s not some uncanny ability. It’s not infinite wisdom. It’s not foresight. It’s dumb luck. But the story is sold as skill.
The mistake is not only denying luck after hitting the improbable 4 on a 17 but embracing bad luck after busting from a hit on 17. The failure to account for stupidity is probably worse than being falsely endowed with unnatural gifts. Who learns from bad luck?
Gambling Human Nature Book
Of course, this problem is as old as gambling itself. Case in point is a letter to the editor of The Spectator in 1873. An insightful English gentleman shared a scathing assessment, of himself and his fellow gamblers, after his first experience in a casino.
As anecdotal as it is, there are lessons in it. His honest self-assessment is one, but the obvious lesson — same as it ever was — is its a 146-year-old reference to the stories people still invent for themselves after winning and losing bets.
Human nature, so far as I am acquainted with it, is curiously and perversely imbued with the habit of taking full credit for any success in which it is possible to discern or imagine a voluntary element, and of letting the element of pure chance fall into the background of the mind. It is true that a loser will, in speaking to others of his losses, always dwells on his ill-luck, just as one catches at almost any excuse for a blunder, rather than refer it to one’s own blundering habit of mind. But I have always observed that in ordinary games of mixed chance and skill one thinks better of oneself for winning and worse for losing, if one examines one’s real state of mind without reference to others. I was therefore anxious to see the condition of mind which would accompany games of unmixed chance…
I resolved — strongly, I must admit, against the counsel of my prudent wife, who regarded the notion that there was any psychological gain to be made out of gambling as pure moonshine, and looked upon my notion as only a wilful man’s caprice for burning a bigger hole in his pocket than was at all needful — to pay a short visit to Saxon-Les-Bains, and risk, or rather lose — for I was well aware I should really lose — five pounds there.
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Indeed, I felt clear, after watching my companions — one of then a shrewd counsel learned in the law, the other a cool, sagacious Cantab, who came out high in the Tripos the other day — that neither of them had the true gambling instinct as strongly as I, though so far as their experience went, it seemed to confirm my own. And what was that experience? This chiefly — that I was distinctly conscious of partially attributing to some defect or stupidity in my own mind every venture on an issue that proved a failure; that I groped about within me for something in me like an anticipation or warning (which of course was not to be found) of what the next event was to be, and generally hit upon some vague impulse in my own mind which determined me; that whenever I succeeded, I raked up my gains with a half-impression that I had been a clever fellow, and had made a judicious stake, just as if I had really moved a skilful move at chess; and that when I failed, I thought to myself, “Ah, I knew all the time I was going wrong in selecting that number, and yet I was fool enough to stick to it,” which of course was a pure illusion, for all that I did really know was that the chance was even or much more than even, against me. But this illusion followed me throughout. I had a sense of deserving success when I succeeded, and of having failed through my own wilfulness, or wrong-headed caprice of choice, when I failed. When, as not unfrequently happened, I put a coin on the corner between four numbers, receiving eight times my stake if any of the four numbers turned up, I was conscious of an honest glow of self-applause. I could see the same flickering impressions around me. One man, who was a great winner, evidently thought exceedingly well of his own sagacity of head, and others also, for they were very apt to follow his lead as to stakes, and looked upon him with a sort of temporary and provisional, though purely intellectual respect.
But quite convinced me of the real strength of this curious fallacy of the mind, was that when I heard that the youngest of my companions had actually come off a slight winner, having at the last moment retrieved his previous losses by putting his sole remaining two-franc-piece out of the hundred-and-twenty-five francs he was willing to risk, on the number which represented his age, and gained in consequence thirty-two times his stake, my respect for his shrewdness distinctly rose, and I became sensible of obscure self-reproaches for not having made use of like arbitrary reasons for the selection of the various numbers on which I had staked my money during the period of my own play. It was true that there was no number high enough, sad to say, for that which would have represented my own age, so that I could not have staked on that — but then, why not have selected numbers whereon to stake that had some real relation to my own life, the day of the month which gave me birth, or the number of the abode in which I work in town? Evidently in spite of the clearest understanding of the chances of the game, the moral fallacy which attributes luck or ill-luck to something of capacity or gift, or incapacity and deficiency, in the individual player, must be profoundly ingrained in us. I am convinced that the shadow of merit and demerit is thrown by the mind over multitudes of actions which have no more possibility of either wisdom or folly in them than — granted, of course, the folly of gambling at all — the selection of the particular chance on which you win or lose. When you win at one time and lose at another, the mind is almost unable to realise steadily that there was no reason accessible to yourself why you won and why you lost. And so you invent — what you know perfectly well to be a fiction — the conception of some sort of inward divining-rod which guided you right when you used it properly, and failed only because you did not attend adequately to its indications.
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And when my wife reproached me, with triumphant references to her own warnings, for the missing five pounds, I replied, what I really feel — though I know I shall never convince her of it — that my experience was not dearly bought. Is it the only case in which the fiction that we ourselves have earned — whether good or evil fortune — forces itself with absurd tenacity upon us? Luther himself could hardly have desired a better proof than this of the pranks which the imagination plays us when dealing with that sense of merit and demerit so closely bound up with our human egotism. We give ourselves credit, and get credit, I suspect, for a vast deal more both of wisdom and folly in life than we deserve. Are nine-tenths of the prizes and the blanks of life at all more ascribable to any fine selective purpose or deficiency thereof in him who draws them, than my losses, or my friend the Cantab’s sudden retrieval of his loss? Yet I still look upon that able and thoughtful Youth with a deep sense of respect for his cleverness in retrieving his losses, and on myself with a melancholy consciousness that, like “Traddles” in “David Copperfield,” my native awkwardness of mind must have been the cause of my very moderate reverses.
Source:
Saxon-Les-Bains: A Study in the Psychology of Gambling
Gambling Human Nature Meaning
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