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gered, the bank will certainly win about their percentage, and the players will therefore lose to a corresponding extent. This is inevitable, so only that the play continue long enough. Now, it is sometimes forgotten that to ensure such gain to the bank, it is by no means necessary that the players should come prepared to stake so many hundreds of pounds. Those who sit down to play may not have a tithe of the sum necessary--if only wagered once-to ensure the success of the bank. But every florin the players bring with them may be, and commonly is, wagered over and over again. There is repeated gain and loss, and loss and gain; inasmuch that the player who finally loses a hundred pounds, may have wagered
in the course of the sitting a thousand or even many thousand pounds. Those fortunate beings who 'break the bank from time to time, may even have accomplished the feat of wagering millions during the process which ends in the final loss of the few thousands they may have begun with.
Why is it, then, it will be asked, that this inexorable law is yet not to be trusted ? For this reason, simply, that the mode of its operation is altogether uncertain. If in a thousand trials there has been a remarkable preponderance of any particular class of events, it is not a whit more probable that the preponderance will be compensated by a corresponding deficiency in the next thousand trials than that it will be repeated in that set also. The most probable result of the second thousand trials is precisely that result which was most probable for the first thousand--that is, that there will be no marked preponderance either way. But there may be such a preponderance; and it may lie either way. It is the same with the next thousand, and the next, and for every such set. They are in no way affected by preceding events. In the nature of things, how can they be ? But, ' the whirligig of time brings in its revenges' in its own way. The balance is restored just as chance directs. It may be in the next thousand trials, it may be not before many thousands of trials. We are utterly unable to guess when or how it will be brought about.
But it may be urged that this is mere assertion; and
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