Defying The Odds
Games Of Chance Can luck be so bad that it defies all odds? Apparently so. I am not going to mention any names, but I know a lady that has been going to the casinos in Atlantic City for about 15 years and only once won a few hundred dollars. If you ask her how she did for the day she will tell you she won, but then lost it all back. I have always said that if you come back with less money than you went with, you lost and if you try and put it any other way you are only fooling yourself. The odds on losing this many times are almost impossible to calculate. There are others however, although very few, who are extremely lucky and win far more times than the odds would indicate are possible over time. Is there some unseen force that controls our luck? Some might say that there is no such thing as luck, just destiny. To tell you the truth I am not sure how I feel about this? These people think that everything that happens to us has already been written down before it happened and that is why it is possible for some prophets to predict the future. Sometimes bad luck comes in small incredible doses. An example of this is when I had a small electrical device in my shirt pocket. I went into my bathroom and was bending over the sink and the device fell out of my pocket in such a way that it bounced up, hit the wall and went directly into the open toilet bowl. I probably could have not duplicated this feat if I tried to for a year. Sure it was very funny to some people, because it looked like a Three Stooges routine, but it wasn't funny to me. I don't know how many of you have seen the soccer game FIFA 2005? If you watch one sequence of events it is astounding. Three times in a row the ball is banked off the bars on the goalkeeper's cage without going in. If this isn't hard luck I don't know what is. Pyrrhus of Epirus was a famous conqueror, and feared warrior. Apparently he was not feared by an elderly woman however. He was fighting a battle in Argos and from all accounts doing quite well. That was until the woman took out her anger upon him. She grabbed a roof tile and threw it at Pyrrhus and stunned him. An enemy soldier saw his condition and ran him through with a sword. Chrysippus was a Greek philosopher. He wasn't known for his sense of humor, when one day his donkey got drunk and while watching the donkey try any figs in this condition, he laughed so hard that he died. Sometimes it seems that what some people call bad luck, is really just bad judgment. Let's take the case of Eleazar Maccabeus, an ancient warrior who was taking part in the battle of Beth-zechariah. He believed that the enemy king was rushing into battle a top a huge war elephant. Eleazar rushed under the beast, stabbing it through the heart with a spear, only to have the elephant collapse on him and crush him like a grape. John Lee was an example of a man with uncanny good luck. He had been convicted of a brutal murder and was sentenced to hang by the court. Many facts pointed to him being guilty, but they were all circumstantial. The hangman stated that he had a dream that he would not be able to get the trap door open to actually hang Lee. Strangely Lee stated that he had the same dream. When it came time to hang Lee, he was marched up to the gallows, had his hands and feet bound and a hood put over his head. The level was pulled and the noise of bolts could clearly be heard, yet the trap door refused to open. Lee was unbound and moved to the side and a sandbag was put in his place. The lever was pulled again and the sandbag dropped as the trap door opened. Next Lee was retied and the noose put back around his neck and a hood put over his head. The executioner pulled the lever, but again the trap door refused to open. This time they had greased the mechanism that opens the door before bringing Lee back. The sequence was repeated a third time, but when Lee was stood over the trap door again and prepared for hanging, the door refused to open. At that point a messenger was sent to the Home Secretary and Lee's sentence of death was commuted to life in prison and he was released 20 years later. Was he saved because of incredible good luck as many said, or were those who said that divine intervention had saved him correct? I don't know how many of you have heard this theory before, but there are some that believe that we actually control what is known as luck. This is known as,”the external locus of control”. The idea is that we unconsciously cause things to happen to us. If we believe that we are unlucky, then we will probably never have really good luck. The opposite is also true. Those that believe that they are lucky will usually have much better luck than those that feel that they are unlucky. Taking this a step further, it is also believed that even though some of these people that are unlucky, say that they are going to win, they really do not believe it deep down in their psyche and therefore are still believing in bad luck. How many of us have said, ”I'll buy a lottery ticket, but I don't have a chance of winning”? According to experts, you must train yourself to really believe that you are going to win, to have a chance of winning at all.
The Eagle (Orzel) The Polish submarine Eagle had managed to escape from Poland just a few days after it was conquered by the Nazis The submarine had navigated a minefield without a hitch, but the bad luck was about to start. Four days into the voyage the captain fell ill, he had typhus. The executive officer took over and the naval base where the submarine had gone to, had to be evacuated. The submarine began to experience mechanical problems and at this point the submarine had to find a neutral port, she headed towards Finland. The submarine landed in Estonia when the captain was taken to the hospital and repairs were made to the boat. The next thing to happen was that the Estonians then sent a crew to remove the torpedoes from the submarine and the boat was only able to protect four from being removed. At this point it was decided that the submarine had to make a break for it. The guards were overpowered and the boat headed back out into the ocean. The crew had decided to keep fighting the Germans. The submarine joined the British Navy. Disguised merchant ships had been sent ahead by the Germans when they sent their fleet to invade Norway. The Eagle had sunk one of them known as the Rio de Janeiro, which had been loaded with German soldiers. The submarine radioed this back to headquarters, but the report was not believed at the time and therefore the invasion of Norway was still undetected. When the Germans decided to invade France in 1940, all Allied undersea craft in Norwegian waters was sent Southwest except for the Eagle, which then disappeared, never to be heard from again. The name of the submarine in Polish was Orzel, which in English was Eagle. The boat had experienced more than its share of bad luck and in the end, it was the bad luck of not being contacted and told to leave, when all the other submarines in the area were sent away. |
Hard Luck During A Game
