32 | New Scientist | 9 April 2022
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Book
Luck: A personal account
of fortune, chance and risk
in thirteen investigations
David Flusfeder
4th EstateRUSSIAN novelist Fyodor
Dostoevsky was a gambling
addict. He believed that if he could
only maintain his composure,
the various strategies and systems
he dreamed up to beat the roulette
wheel would one day pay off.
He was kidding himself. No
strategy can defeat pure chance.
David Flusfeder is a semi-
professional poker player, who
knows all about the thrill of the
gamble. In Luck, he bypasses
the scientific harsh truth about
randomness and probability and
instead has written a book about
the human side of luck, which
he defines as “the operations
of chance taken personally”.
His eccentric, insightful
meditations focus on fortune’s
favourites and its gulls throughout
history. We hear the stories of the
Marquis de Dangeau, 18th-century
Versailles’s wiliest card shark,
right up to the experience of
four-time lottery winner Joan
Ginther, also known as“the
luckiest woman on Earth”.
In an effort to stop his project
sprawling, each of the essays
here is largely self-contained.
They have to be, because Flusfeder
decided to put the hand of fate
to good use by presenting them
in an order determined by an
online randomiser.
Dostoevsky’s experience is
perhaps the most compelling.
Even after he managed to ridhimself of his addiction, the
novelist retained the conviction
“that in games of chance, if one
has perfect control of one’s will,
so that the subtlety of one’s
intelligence and one’s power
of calculation are preserved,
one cannot fail to overcome
the brutality of blind chance
and to win.”
Flusfeder reckons Dostoevsky
was born in the wrong place at
the right time; he should have
been playing poker with French
settlers in New Orleans. The
card game invented there in 1829
really does reward composure
and nerve, as well as luck.
Not that poker is an altogether
rational pursuit. If it were, then
Flusfeder wouldn’t be wearing
green underpants to every
important game. Superstition
abounds on the poker circuit,our feet, and without which we
wouldn’t be able to function at all.
If^ we had to constantly re-evaluate
what was going on around us,
we would quickly get left behind.
Instead, our brains make
reasonable assumptions and
update them if necessary. Along
the way, we develop habits, and
the impression that we live in a
deterministic world in which what
happened yesterday is a reliable
guide for our actions today.
This works well enough in day-
to-day life, but, writes Flusfeder,
the extension of this very human
way of thinking to economics
often fails when it turns out
that past results are an imperfect
guide to future performance.
On this, statistician David
Spiegelhalter, who studies the
public perception of risk, puts it
bluntly. Probability doesn’t exist
outside the mind, he says: “It is not
an objective aspect of the world.
It’s a way to operationalise a
belief.” At best, he says, it provides
us with a map to help us navigate
outcomes that are immeasurable
and ultimately unknowable.
Given our weaknesses in the
face of randomness, how should
we proceed? According to
Flusfeder, rather than cowering
from the unknown and avoiding
all randomness, we should pick
our battles carefully, seizing
good fortune when it arises,
while swerving unnecessary
risks. It is an imperfect guide
to life, but it is a start at least.
Virtue may be an even better
option, says Flusfeder. A life lived
with honesty and integrity will
at least be consistent, whether we
are suffering adversity or enjoying
good fortune. As the Renaissance
poet Petrarch put it: “Many times
whom fortune has made bond,
virtue has made free.” ❚Simon Ings is a writer based in Londonas it does wherever people
wield little or no control over
their lives. Professional tennis
is one example, writes Flusfeder.
“There is so much time to think,
and doubt, and lose the learned
rhythms of technique, and to be
afraid”, that the sport is awashwith lucky tics, habits and absurd
pre-match routines, he points out.
Superstition, Flusfeder argues,
isn’t some primitive hangover
from our distant past. It is the
inevitable result of our capacity
for taking mental shortcuts, which
makes us capable of thinking onDEEP
OL
BYPLAINPICTURE
/PLAT
TFORMI should be so lucky
The experiences of a semi-professional gambler make an intriguing
starting point to explore our belief in luck, says Simon IngsSuperstition abounds on
the poker circuit, where
players wield little control“ Superstition is the
inevitable result of our
capacity for taking
mental shortcuts, and
thinking on our feet”