Never give up?

One of the things I do when I'm not in the casinos is read with two third-graders on
Thursday afternoons at an elementary school in Henderson. This volunteer gig, through a very worthy organization called Spread the Word Nevada, is a lot of fun and, I hope, a benefit to the kids who get some personal attention as well as help with their literacy skills.

A couple of weeks ago one of my kids brought a book about a toad and a frog who were best friends. One of the reptiles (I forget which) gave the other a hat for his birthday. The recipient loved the hat, but it was too big and came down over his eyes, which caused navigational problems.

The giver of the gift offered a solution. He told his friend to think very big thoughts before he went to bed. This would cause his head to swell to a size that would accommodate the hat. The giver sneaked into the recipient's house while he slept, removed the hat, altered it to fit his friend's head, and replaced it before dawn.

When the birthday amphibian woke up, he put on his new hat, and it fit perfectly. He was sure his friend's plan -- think big thoughts -- had worked.

The story offered me a golden opportunity to impress upon my young reading buddy what I consider to be a key aspect of human psychology -- the ease with which we reach wrong conclusions about cause and effect. Not the easiest of concepts for a third-grader to understand, but still I was surprised by his answer when I asked him what point the author was trying to make:

"Never give up!"

So many stories in our culture convey that theme that it's what jumped into his mind, irrelevant thought it was.

It's an idea I've thought about a lot. Obviously, persistence can be a virtue. If you're trying to achieve something worthwhile, and you're going about it in an informed and intelligent way, working hard to achieve your goal makes sense.

But what if what you're trying to do is impossible, or you're going about it the wrong way, or it just isn't worth the effort that will be required? In those cases, applying your efforts in another direction obviously would be a good idea.

But the here's the question I find interesting: How do  you know? The folklore posits a maverick whose ideas are dismissed by those around him. But somehow he just knows that if he keeps at it, he will prove the skeptics wrong. It's just a matter of keeping at it.

But sometimes the critics are right. Even if the're not, engaging them might yield some ideas or information that could help the loner achieve his goal. But cooperation isn't as good a literary ingredient as defiance, so the stories tend to be about heroes who go it alone.

Even just periodically reevaluating one's progress might lead to the conclusion that giving up is the wiser course.

So what does this have to do with gambling, the subject of this blog?

Gambling is one of the few activities in our society in which quitting is encouraged. "Know when to quit" is on the cover of the brochures about problem gambling offered by many casinos.

The assumption behind the encouragement of quitting is that gamblers who expect or hope to win are on a futile quest because, in the long run, the house will always win.

For the vast majority of gamblers that is true. Continuing to gamble in an attempt to recover losses or obtain money to pay debts or expenses will usually result in further losses. It's better to quit when you're less behind rather than continue to play until you're more behind.

But the presumption that a gambler is destined to lose is rebuttable. As I have explained in this blog, there are ways a gambler can get a long-term advantage over the house. Even better, it is often possible for a gambler to know with a great deal of precision the amount of that advantage.

In fact, if you cannot determine the amount of your advantage or explain how you calculated your advantage, you almost certainly don't have one. Gambling is governed by math, and you have an advantage only when the numbers give you one.

Losing streaks are part of gambling, even for players who have a long-term advantage. But in gambling, unlike many other human endeavors, it's possible to know whether you should persist through adversity. If you're playing at an advantage and within your bankroll, you can power through knowing that losing will eventually give way to winning.