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Chapter 5 - Chance and Luck

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2023

Jared Poley
Jared Poley
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
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Summary

The casino provided a unique location to probe the logic of chance for those seeking to understand fortune and misfortune, causation and correlation. Chance helped generate predictability. When we shift to consider the picture of luck that emerges, we see that it is exhibited in various systems designed to generate wins at the gambling table, lured to a person to through any number of bizarre superstitions, and made the object of social scientific inquiry. Luck was something that people could generate, manufacture, cultivate, or capture. This element of human agency speaks to a vision of the world that promoted the basic idea of human agency while also acknowledging its limits. Gambling systems and superstitions, especially when they did not rest on the foundation of the “maturity of chances,” were at their heart modern attempts to bend luck to one’s side.

Keywords

chanceluckHenri PoincarécomputationfateoccultrisktimeWheel of Fortuneagency
Type
Chapter
Information
Luck, Leisure, and the Casino in Nineteenth-Century Europe
A Cultural History of Gambling
 , pp. 111 - 138
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Chance and Luck
  • Jared Poley, Georgia State University
  • Book: Luck, Leisure, and the Casino in Nineteenth-Century Europe
  • Online publication: 24 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009393539.006
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Chance and Luck
  • Jared Poley, Georgia State University
  • Book: Luck, Leisure, and the Casino in Nineteenth-Century Europe
  • Online publication: 24 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009393539.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Chance and Luck
  • Jared Poley, Georgia State University
  • Book: Luck, Leisure, and the Casino in Nineteenth-Century Europe
  • Online publication: 24 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009393539.006
Available formats
×