Comparison of roulette, poker and insurance
There are many various types of betting, most of them have one thing in common – you bet a rather small amount of money and there is a very small chance that you will win a lot of money. Why are there no lottery tickets for $1 where you would have 50% chance for winning $1.90? Or 80% chance for winning $1.10? I guess people just wouldn’t buy them. But why do people buy tickets for $1 where they have 1 in a million chance for winning $100 000? I can not think of any other reason than that they are stupid.
Comparison:
Insurance – you pay just little money and if something highly unprobable happens you can get a lot of money
Lottery – you pay just little money and if something highly unprobable happens you can get a lot of money
Roulette – you choose how much you want to risk, but you will lose on average 1/37 of what you bet
Poker – depends mainly on your knowledge of statistics and psychology compared to your opponents’, you choose how much you want to risk
Betting with friends – has the best positive expectation if you have the right friends and know how to do it, reminds me of a former classmate who lost every single bet he has made (he thought he’d write a 500 page book, run faster than marathon winners, and so on…)
Post edit: Stowawaying is another type – you have a very high percentage to win a very small amount and a very small percentage to lose quite a huge amount.
As a side note, I face the same problem over and over when writing to the blog – I have a lot of very good ideas (at least I think so), but I am too lazy to put them in proper order (I just write what I think of, the order is more or less random) and generally play with it a bit, I just write it all down and publish it. Otoh this has the advantage that it forces you to find out the connections yourself, so maybe that would be a good excuse for my laziness. 
Keo wrote:
Jestli chceš sázet s kurzem třeba 1,5, tak na sport. Nikdo ti nebrání vsadit na jeden zápas. Pravda ale je, že většina lidí vsází na víc.
Drc wrote:
No, myslim, že tě studium ekonomie bude bavit… Dělej do pojišťovnictví tam použiješ stejné znalosti psychologie a statistiky jako v pokru…
Obecně platí: malé riziko -> malý zisk (a naopak) a stejně tak malá likvidita -> velký zisk – to je jenom pro případ, že by ses příště vrhl na kapitálové trhy… (Tam se dá taky fakt hodně a docela rychle získat, akorát je to o hodně náročnější…)