Why Winning at Gambling is Really Losing

Found money.

What is it?

You gamble and make some money but you consider it "found" or not real. If you lose it, it's not the same as losing money you earned.

So say you gamble and win $10,000. That money is considered "found" and has less value then earned money, so it's treated differently. The majority of people will increase the size of their bet until their $10,000 is now $0.  Once this happens the money that was once found now becomes lost money and you want to get it back.

So what do you do continue gambling and increasing wagers until you do. You may get the $10K back but eventually you'll be sorry you ever won that first bet.

Why do you lose if you gamble? This is because the odds of winning are almost always against you. For example on Draft Kings if you bet you don't get even money (ie you bet $1 and win $2, doubling your initial bet). You pay a 20% vig or fee to make the bet. This means to break even you have to pick or be the winner 60% of the time. The best sports analysts win 55% of the time so this bet is really a suckers bet.  The same in the casino where you have losing odds on all games. There appears to be a Black Jack exception where if you learn to count cards and play perfectly you could go above 50% chance of winning. But most casinos will ban you if you can do this.

The best description of the pitfalls of gambling is in the book "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhig. pp. 246 - 251.

Daily 5 Minute Journal Jan. 24, 2016

Lots of snow and another unproductive day. I'm going to spend some time this morning creating code that tracks what window I'm using.

The big task for today will be shoveling but I could pay someone to do it. I feel that I can get some exercise. The key is to not lift too much snow by using a smaller shovel.

The cable went out last night while we were in the middle of watch a David Bowie documentary. One thing I learned was that David Bowie was called David Jones but changed his name when the Davie Jones from the Monkees became popular. Also many people though Bowie had two different color eyes, but the difference was caused by getting punched in his eye that left his pupil permanently dilated.




Prior to that I was watching a movie called the Velvet Goldmine on Putlocker (em)  that was highly recommended by my wife's brother. I didn't like it and stopped in the middle to watch real Bowie. One thing while watching on Putlocker is that potential viruses or are they called viri come up. One was a voice saying you've been infected call Microsoft at 877-xxx xxxx immediately.  I couldn't minimize or leave the page in Chrome browser. The only thing that worked was Ctrl+Shift+Esc which is pressing and hold Ctrl and Shift down and then pressing Esc key. This brings up Taskmgr program where you can select the browser in this case Chrome and press the End Task button in lower right corner.

Putlocker

Daily 5 Minute Journal Jan. 28, 2016

Weight was down today at 162.8 and blood sugar fasting seems to be a consistent 105.  On Wednesday night I went with a co-worker to a Fin-Tech meetup at a bar called the headless Horseman near the Irving Plaza theater.  They served free booze if you signed up for the meetup.  I had 3 vodka's on the rocks. I chatted with a number of people and when I gave out my business card I gave the person a blank index card.  Something about this just made me laugh inside.

So the night went on and I chatted to a number of people, but then the story gets strange. I have very little memory of what happened but at some time I left the bar and I don't remember leaving. I remember looking up at a sign and it seemed like I was on Delancy St more likely by Stuyvesant Place. So I took a cab to Penn Station and the next thing I remember waking not at my stop I though it was Islip. There was a cab outside so I had him take me home which cost $65 with tip.

I find out that google tracks your every move, but when I check out where I was, it's blank. Who knows, maybe I was abducted by aliens.

After eating at Taco Bell 3 items my blood sugar hits 178, :(

Daily 5 Minute Journal. January 30, 2016

Weight okay 163.6 but didn't reach my month goal of < 160, .  My blood sugar AM reading continues to be 105 which isn't good, pre-diabetic and I'm not sure what to do to get it lower. I'm not sure my Metformin is working. I'm thinking of testing each night with and without before bed an upon awakening and seeing if it lowers my blood sugar at my current dosage of 500 mg. I'm disappointed that my AM bs seems to be 105.

Now that February is starting up I think I need to try weight lifting to better improve my osteoporosis and high blood sugar.

Went to a Barnes and Noble book store today and bought a few new books.

• The Productivity Project - Chris Bailey
• 101 Best Diabetic Foods - Betsy A. Hornick
• One Year to an Organized Work Life
• Never too busy to Cure Clutter
• The 80/20 Principle
• Calm - 50 Mindfulness and Relaxation Exercises to destress and unwind
• Who Gets Promoted and Who Doesn't and Why

I was looking for the book for my son I will teach you to be rich +Ramit Sethi but they didn't have it. It seems like a good book for college students.

Took my dog to dog park. She didn't seem to enjoy it as she was afraid of the other dogs. 

Dog on antihistamine benadryl (em)

Love Target Grape drink.

Library books overdue. I started to develop software that goes to my libraries website and retrieves how many days to my books are due. Even with this I missed the deadline.

Daily 5 minute Journal - Jan. 31, 2016

Went out to dinner to Mario's in Plainview two night's ago and Accidentally bumped into some neighbors.
The food was surprisingly good. I had a Gorgonzola salad with chicken and a glass of Merlot that was delicious. My son and wife's dishes were also excellent.  a little rude If the server was nicer this would have been a really great meal. I felt this because we were talking with the friends and she asked if we could order drinks. I don't know exactly what it was but she could have done it in a better way.

Last night went to Krinti an upscale Mediterranean restaurant with another couple.

Food was awesome. The place was a bit small as we waited squished at the bar. Afterwards we went to Cardinali in Syosset. They have such great Gelato and the coffee was also very good.

One of the people is a very nice guy who's into horse racing. I told him about a strategy that a very smart guy who was head of algorithmic trading at JP Morgan Chase. The strategy is to always bet the long shot. He reminded of something I told him as we use to take the train together. I said you'd know I made it big when you saw a Porsche in my driveway. I use to come up with lots of ideas that I'd discuss with him on the train ride.

It's getting hard to pick what to do next with all the books I just bought. I do have a library book that's one day overdue. So for any reading it's just this book. Choose Yourself  by +james altucher

Daily 5 Minute Journal Jan. 23, 2016 #BlizzardOf2016

Blizzard of 2016 and about 6 inches of snow at noon.

Woke up with wt. of 165 and blood sugar of 105.  This brings me to one of my favorite quotes "If you do what you've done you get what you got."

Oldest son has went back to college and I'm happy I didn't have to take him.

January is coming to a close and for the 3rd straight month I didn't reach my goal.

• Nov. 2015 - Declutter
• Dec. 2015 - Lower Blood Sugar
• Jan. 2016 - W < 160
• Feb. 2016 - Learn more and take action on osteoporosis
• Mar. 2016 - Finish Wisdom of a Dad

My monthly goal idea hasn't been working.

Why?

Maybe the lack of a plan. It was my goal but not in an all out attempt. 

In terms of deculttering, I did throw out some stuff but not enough. Lowering Blood Sugar, I've started on Metformin but haven't seen a real lowering of blood sugar or measured it clearly. My weight has stabilized and seems to be trending. between 161 and 170.

One thing I've learned is that deadlines help.  If you wait until the last minute and don't have a deadline, you'll never finish.

I've been enjoying work more lately as I've been put in charge of the Tuesday meetings and it takes time to run them.  I spent a lot of time getting the Snapshots software which is a screen recorder to work but it's not working on my laptop.

Things are changing fast at work. I've started working with a new guy in a different dept. who was late for a meeting I set up. He had very long hair, rather young and had a weird bag with him. He also told be he managed $3 mm and was let go because his quota was $6mm. I gave him a presentation and he was yawning through it. He made a comment about the code (Python) didn't have enough "Try" statements. He also complained that (me60) chart on Excel didn't have units or a label.

New Rule: When meeting someone new never complain about their work even if it's bad especially if unsolicited.

I find out through a co-worker that there will be a presentation on Tableau at a weekly meeting that I probably wouldn't have attended. I need an easy way to put something on my calendar at work. I currently use email to send tasks to work when not at work and home tasks when not at home. I wish the email system could automatically add the tasks to my to do lists.

Recently heard 3 podcasts from +Tim Ferriss. One was with  @EricRWeinstein which was very interesting one with @PeterTheil and one with +Daymond John. It's always the same issue though whether it's from a book, podcast or comment; how do you do what someone says when it's good advice. I call this B2A or Book to Action. I have read many self-help books, marketing, sales books but have I done one thing in them. Even the Four Hour Work Week has so much highlighting but little action.

The books you have tells you about your goals. You could use the books to give yourself a good idea of what you want.

Annoyed that on twitter mobile I couldn't add someone to a list.

Atheism

Love the +Sam Harris quote. 

“#Atheism is not a philosophy, it is not even a world view – it is simply an admission of the obvious.” #quote @SamHarrisOrg

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) January 21, 2016

STS

Smart Task Selection. There are 2 questions:

• What should I do now?
• What did I do?

The idea is that we humans are prisoners of our habits which are extremely hard to change. If someone or something told you exactly what to do and when, could they increase their success?

Would they follow the instructions?  How would this program or recipe work?

I recently shared my idea of Smart Task Selection with a co-worker and he liked the idea. He thought it should be calendar based where I've always had it task based. I have thought about calendar based and maybe I should try this.

Presentations

I've been working on a presentation with a co-worker and have a few pet peeves that are done

• Define all acronyms in PPT
• Clarify terms with whole slides
• 10/20/30 - Ten slides, twenty minutes, thirty point font - +Guy Kawasaki 

New phone

New phone, Droid Turbo came in. It's my 3rd one. First one headphone jack failed. The second one would reboot all the time, mostly when walking in cold weather. I was able to figure out how to remove the Simm (me10) card, by using my finger nail and pulling it out, then replacing it in my new phone.  

Twitter

Still like twitter as I have a lot of followers and enjoy getting likes and retweets. Would like to find a way to make some friends out of it.

Health

Neck pain is waning, which is from sleeping on a couch and twisting my head. Having pain in left knee when walking up/down stairs.

sin

Dog Training

This week I tried to train my dog to bark and identify objects that we can't find like her collar and the remote. I did the training using a clicker. At some point she got it. When I asked my wife to come watch her do it she couldn't.  She was picking stuff at random and getting a treat. Next time I have to only reward her if she picks out the item the first time and not after trying all the items

Daily 5 Minute Journal - Jan. 18, 2016

Martin Luther King's birthday and I get a day off from work making it a 3 day weekend.

He was a great man for teaching non-violent protest and his beautiful "I have a dream speech"

It's a cold day 25 degrees in NYC and a slight coating of snow on the ground and phone just rebooted but at least I'm getting a new one.

I think I have ADHD, from an article in Lifehack.org,

I just listened and analyzed an interview from +Daymond John  of +Tim Ferriss. Even a guy like Daymond was uhing in the interview. Though it was very useful to hear Tim's story on how he got success. Of course luck is involved.

He met +Robert Scoble by accidentally being nice to his wife Miriam who was helping people sign in to a conference.

At +SXSW someone canceled and Tim was able to speak there.

He brought on the luck through persistence, being nice to people and asking for help. Some of the takeaways I got were:

• Be nice to people
• Don't pitch where everyone is pitching
• In person beats email or phone
• Surf waves that no one has surfed before
• Hardest place to sell a book is a bookstore
• Volunteer for co's that can help you and work your ass off
• You can get rejected many times and be successful as long as you don't give up
• Small thing (mention from Robert Scoble) can start the entire snowball rolling
• Prepare your presentation, even if in front of a dog
• Get feedback on your idea
• Test your concept so you know if you should pursue it or not

Daily Five Minute Journal - January 16, 2016 (video will bring tears to your eyes)

I haven't been journaling daily but it's much easier to do it on the weekend. It says 5 minutes but it definitely takes much longer.

Still doing twitter and also enjoy getting retweets or likes.

Blood sugar is high this morning 110 and weight was down 162.6.  I haven't been that focused on losing weight even though it's my month's goal.

Neck pain almost gone. I slept on couch for a couple of hours and woke up with a pain in my neck. I've had pain for at least a week.

Movies planned for tonight

David Bowie

David Bowie passed away this past week. They're is a shrine to him on Lafayette and Houston (pronounced Howston) in NYC. Loved his song Space Oddity with my favorite lyric "and the stars look very different today" brings tears to my eyes.

Death List

I continue to update my Death list of famous people who died before their time http://bit.ly/DiedB4Time

Cur Task

This is the term for a spreadsheet I use to select what to do, ie my to-do list. I use it to PURGE (Plan Ur Goals Everyday).  It's a partial solution to my STS (Smart Task Selection) idea. It's goal is to answer the question "What should I do now?"

Obstacles

I'm into obstacles this week. One of the things I've been bad at is overcoming obstacles at work.  

Verizon

Finally got Verizon to send me a new phone. This was a PITFA. The Droid Turbo phone kept rebooting. I lost data in the process as I didn't back up information from my apps. There was nothing that I really needed, mostly ideas and passwords. The things I tried were:

• Bring phone into Verizon service center
• They told me it was a bug and I had to wait for Motorola to fix it
• Report issue via twitter
• Ran phone on safe mode (still randomly rebooted)
• Refreshed phone (still randomly rebooted)

I did notice that the reboots were much more likely to occur if I was outside and walking. If listening on headphones it rebooted even more. I'm not so confident that a replacement phone will fix the issue. Verizon also said they would remove an overage charge from the phone.

Lottery Odds Computation (Powerball)

I didn't win the $1.6 Billion Power Ball drawing. I joined a group at my company and we bought 100 tickets from 40 people at $5.00 a pop.  We won $20 and played the Friday night powerball.

The odds of the Powerball are easy to calculate in Excel.

Five balls are picked without replacement numbered from 1 to 69 and a sixth ball from 1 to 26 is picked.  The Excel formula
=COMBIN(69,5)*26

returns

292,201,338 which means you have a 1 in 292,201,338 chance for each $2.00. The actual formula is       n! ---------- k! (n-k)!

where ! is the factorial. The factorial of 5 is 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1.

The odds of flipping a coin to heads 28 times in a row is .5^28 = 3.72529 10^-9 and 1/3.72529... = 1 in 268,435,456.

The ^ character means to the power of. So x ^ y  is x to the power of y. So 2^3 = 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

If your computer is slow what can you do?

This morning spent 3 hours from 10:30 to 1:30 to get computer to work. I used MSConfig utility to help. It told me to use Task Manager (taskmgr) to change start up programs. Of course just rebooting your machine can fix the problem but it didn't for me.

To run MSConfig I pressed Windows+R to bring up the Run dialog and then typed in MSConfig.

and when I restarted computer nothing worked, I think because of the "Selective Startup." I changed it to "Normal Startup,"

I clicked the Startup tab and it said "To manage starup items, use the Startup section of Task Manager, with a link

Open Task Manager 







I then disabled all start up tasks and also disable all chrome add-ins

chrome;//extensions


This fixed the speed issue. But one final thing to do is to uninstall recently added software. And then afterwards to add each disabled or stopped program back until problem is identified.

You can do this via Windows key+R and run "Control"

Select Programs and Features and uninstall software that might be causing the issue from the most recent,

Daily 5 Minute Journal - Jan. 6, 2016

Health

Blood Sugar seems to be improving slowly (97 at 9 AM, 100 at lunch and 89 at dinner). I'm trying to get my blood sugar < 90. My weight down to 163.8.  I'm trying to follow closely the ExcelDiet.com which I've tried a number of times in the last year but failed. The diet uses the acronym (MEAT)

• Measure
• Enter
• Adjust
• Talk

I measured and entered but didn't adjust and talk about it. The key is to be very aware of whether I'm above or below my goal and to adjust based on that. 

I was drinking Bulletproof coffee for a while but it didn't really work. The drink is about 500 calories for 2 cups and I was usually still hungry. 

Today I skipped my usual 6 mile walk because I'm ahead of my goal. I'm considering having ice cream if my family wants it.  

Work

Work has been a little more interesting as I've started working more with some new tools:

• Tableau
• MapR

Tableau is a dashboard system that takes data and creates interactive dashboards and MapR is a system that managed Big Data. 

A strange thing I noticed today is that we hired a new employee who is black. My co-worker is black and she hired another person who is black. It just seems odd to me that her group has 3 blacks in it. I guess people will hire people who are like them.  Many years ago I noticed the same thing in a department at a finance firm where all the employees and the manager was black. I feel more connected to them than to the foreigners at work which are either Indian Chinese or Russian. They're all very nice people, though I dislike when the Indians eat in our lunch room and talk in Hindi, makes me feel excluded.

One annoying thing at work is I can't load software to my computer. I have to learn this software but until it's officially approved can't use it. This really sucks.  

Happy and Depressed

I'm a little down from the short days, long nights and cold weather in NY.  When I walk my dog no one is out, it's very quiet.  I've been enjoying my older son being home from college as we've been playing chess and watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. 

Idea

To day on my phone I can say "OK Google" and it allows me to talk to it. I asked "What song is this?" and then whistled 2 songs. It wasn't able to guess it, but it should have asked me if I knew and then improved it's guessing via these types of "training sessions."

Goals

My month's goal is to weigh < 160. I've also have some goals from previous months, to declutter and to lower my blood sugar.

Daily 5 Minute Journal Jan. 3, 2016

Bs 106, wt. 166.8 both are high. I'm trying to get my younger son to also go on Excel Diet. One thing I'm trying is to get off of Bulletproof coffee and drink black coffee instead.

I don't want to do any Islamic research today as I'm sick of reading about it. The last one from a +Sam Harris post

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that religion isn't helping these kids: https://t.co/eHsGVt3ayP

— Sam Harris (@SamHarrisOrg) January 2, 2016

showed from a Memri.org video, children being taught hate and murder in public. Why is this allowed? There are limits to free speech as you can't yell "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater if there isn't one.  You shouldn't be allowed to yell "kill Jews" in public.

Still frustrated with +Verizon as my phone continues to reboot for no apparent reason. On the picture of the battery you can see 7 - 8 gaps which is when the phone rebooted.
This seems to happen more often if the phone was left alone for a long time and then picked up. It has also happened when I didn't touch the phone. After this experience with them I think I'm going to use a different phone carrier.

I would like to know how I waste my time. Seems like I waste a lot of it. Some of my projects like Time-creator.com tried to answer this question but didn't do a great job of it.

Yesterday I tried to write a blog post on Islamophobia but didn't finish it. I didn't use my FTAD method

New York Times Takes bias to an Unbelievable Level

The New York Times today ran the above headline "Palestinian Shot After Stabbing Israeli in Jerusalem."  Why didn't the headline say,

"Israeli stabbed by Palestinian because she walked."

The NY Times headline makes it seem like there was an equal crime. The crime of finding a stranger and stabbing her for doing nothing directly to you is the most morally repugnant behavior sub-humans can do yet the NY Times appears at least in the headline to say that the shot Palestinian was more abhorrent than the Israeli that was stabbed.

Article is at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/01/04/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-palestinians.html

Daily 5 minute Journal. Jan. 2, 2016

Woke up with blood sugar 107 which is still too high. I'm not sure the Metformin is working. I've upped my dosage of metformin to 1000 mg but it hasn't seemed to lower my blood sugar.

Weighed 166 this morning which was higher than I'd like.

I have set my goal for this month to weigh less than 160, but I've been stuck where I am for so long I'm not sure if I can reach it. I have stopped putting butting and coconut oil into my coffee.

Still have a messy area and thought today that I should do the following:

1. Come up with life's goals
2. Come up with 10 year plan
3. Come up with 5 year plan
4. Come up with years goals
5. Come up with monthly goals
6. Come up with week's goal
7. Come up with day's goal
8. Do most important thing on day's to-do list

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time watching Youtube videos. I learned how street performers levitate and watched many of Project One Life videos and saw very funny Jesus pranks. This guy  I have that http://Time-creator.com software that would every 15 minutes remind me to log data about what I did the previous 15 minutes.

question of "What did I do yesterday?" I feel like I did a lot of nothing that was goal related. I had an alarm in my

• What did I do
• What goal?
• My rating for review
• Exceeds Expectations
• Meets Expectations
• Below Expectations
• What an Exceeds Expectation would have done
• What to put on resume

Walked the dog and it was very cold. Watched Larry David with son.  I'm into compiling Larry David songs and he sang two:

1. Jaiya Jaiya Jaiya I made it out of clay
2. N-E-S-T-L-E-S song (The Terrorist Episode)
3. Ah Yapa doody Ya Ya

Reflections on 2015 and Goals for 2016

Happy New Year to all. It's kind of the worlds birthday.

How was my 2015 and what are my plans for 2016?

Many of my goals for last year continue into this year.

1. Weigh < 160 and have downward weight trend
2. Declutter house, books, tasks, ideas
3. Make $ from one of my ideas
4. Pay books on time
5. Make > friends
6. Lower blood sugar
7. Improve my Osteoperosis
8. Smart Task Selection 
9. Be Super Productive
10. Get books printed out (Wisdom of a Dad and 69 Immutable Laws of Weight Loss)
11. Make a million dollars
12. Improve my Job Security
13. >Fun
14. Make the world a safer place
15. Find a way to invest without losing $ do to stock market downturn
16. Coloscopy
17. Heart doctor
18. Lift weights
19. Find an anti-aging doctor
20. Create professional websites

Accomplishments from last year

1. Made 6 figure income
2. Got child into Cornell
3. Measured and tested my blood sugar
4. Finished reading a number of books
5. Got a new monitor and computer and phone
6. Not sure if I mad a new friend 
7. Complete first draft of Wisdom of a Dad
8. Came up with CurTask software
9. Decluttered back of basement
10. Didn't gain any weight stayed level
11. Organized my book shelves
12. Walked over 1 million steps

Failed to achieve in 2015

1. Declutter
2. W < 160
3. Normalize Blood Sugar
4. Make $ from any of my ideas

Top things I learned in 2015

1. Python
2. Mindfulness
3. I have Blood sugar issues
4. I have Osteoporosis
5. Bulletproof Diet
6. Learned of Sam Harris