And in all the games
between that first one in 6th grade and that last
one in 12th grade, I always ate the same breakfast.
I played for good teams, bad teams, great teams
and awful teams. I had good days and bad days; great
days and days when I wanted to crawl into the fetal
position and suck my thumb. No matter, breakfast
on game day always remained the same.
Why? I guess I made an association between that
first breakfast and success and I just locked it
into my brain.
And what about all
those bad and awful teams I played with and all
those bad and awful games I had? It didn’t
matter. I associated success with that breakfast
and so I kept doing it. When things went bad I just
kept doing it figuring things would get better and
after awhile things did get better. Well, when things
were going well I didn’t want to change my
routine. So I never changed my routine.
The above might explain
why so many casino players cling to their “superstitions”
even in the face of bad runs and awful streaks.
I know one lady who plays a single coin in the Megabucks
machine. That is a crazy thing to do because the
only reason to play Megabucks is for the giant jackpot
and the only way to get the giant jackpot is to
put in full coin. Otherwise you face house edges
of around 15 percent but you don’t have a chance
to reap the rewards of such risk.
So why does she do
this foolish thing? Because the very first time
she went to a casino, she won some money on Megabucks
playing one dollar. She didn’t even know what
a Megabucks machine was -- she just plopped herself
at the first machine she found herself near and
won. When I attempted to tell her why she should
either play full coin or abandon those hungry monsters
(she has lost almost every time since on these machines),
she got a glazed look and metaphorically kept eating
her scrambled eggs, ham, and whole wheat toast,
burnt.
Gambling
Superstitions Part 2
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