On 2019-07-29 6:07 a.m., Cindy Hamilton wrote:
> On Monday, July 29, 2019 at 4:26:21 AM UTC-4, dsi1 wrote:

>> What most people don't know is that the Hawaiians love to gamble
>> and they love Las Vegas. My guess is that it's some kind of Asian
>> thing.
>
> It's certainly a sign that they're unfamiliar with the laws of
> probability.
>

Gamblers have a strange way of thinking about the odds. If they are
ahead they figure they are playing with free money, so they have no
problem gambling it all away. If they are behind they figure they are
just a couple chances away from winning it all back. They also tend to
count only their winnings, and not the money the spent. For example, if
they go out with $100, win $200 5 times, and then blow all the winnings
and their original stake they won $1000 when they actually lost $100.

A lot of gamblers tend to be bad at it. I used to play a lot of
backgammon and one friend, a bad gambler, always wanted to play for
money. I am not normally a gambler, but I was always game for that
because he was such easy pickings. He was a bad player and even worse
as using the doubling cube. If he was way ahead and likely to gammon
me, a two point win, he would try to double me. I would turn it down and
concede the game at one point. I could double him at any time and count
on him accepting, so he often lost games at 2, 4, 8 or more points, but
he rarely beat me for more than one point.