Awhile back I played in an online poker tournament, which wasn't unusual for me at the time. What was unusual was that it was a $20 buy in with 180 players, much bigger and higher stakes than my usual $5 buy in 9 player tournaments. I think Jessica was out of town and I wanted to try some thing new.
A weird thing happened; I did well. So well, I was pretty much guaranteed to make the money, and had a good shot of making the top 5. Then something else weird happened. I lost a big hand against someone who also had
a lot of chips. If I would have won that hand, I would have had almost half the chips on the (virtual) table and a great shot of winning, which would have paid out over $1,000. Yep, 1 grand. I win that hand, and maybe I play more tournaments like that and get more into poker than I already was. But, as it happened, I lost the hand and pretty much busted out of the tournament with only winning my money back, and never really played a tournament like that again.
But the "what ifs" isn't why I remembered that hand recently.
When I put all of my chips into the pot on that hand that was going to make or break my winnings, I was a 92% favorite to win the hand. There was only an 8% chance of my opponent to catch the Queen that he needed to win. And that's what happened: the 8% chance of the queen came out.
When Jessica and I were in the hospital right before Riley was born, we had to make some decisions. We needed to decide to proceed with a C-Section even though we weren't sure if her lungs had fully developed yet. Its a long story to understand why we needed to make that decision, but let's just say it needed to be made then. And yes, here is where the numbers come into play. The doctor said there was a 5%-10% chance they wouldn't be developed yet, but it was a worthy risk considering the other options we had. So we went ahead with the C-Section. And it turns out, her lungs were fully developed, something we'd learn the very real and unavoidable truth at 3AM when she was hungry and wanted to let us know how hungry she really was.
In retrospect, I think anyone can understand how lucky I feel to have those two "8% chances" fall in the way they did. And see, that's the weird thing about chance. I suppose in general, everyone is going to have the same amount of 8% happenings in their lifetime. Its just a matter of the importance of the situation of when that 8% happens. I got "lucky" because of 2 situations that had a 92% chance of happening one way and 8% happening a different way, the more important situation went in my favor. Being lucky isn't a matter of how often, but when.
