I'm reading a really terrific novel right now called The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt which has not been published in Canada yet so don't go looking for it unless you are reading this post after May 2011. The book is a western of sorts (in much the same way Oakley Hall's Warlock is a western) but is really just a story that happens to be set in the western American frontier. It tells of Charlie and Eli Sisters, hired killers who head into California at the height of the gold rush with instructions to seek out and kill a man. Eli, the narrator of the book, feels a sort of electricity as they enter into the gold mining territory and describes it as follows:
This perhaps was what lay at the very root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was either something you earned or invented through strength of mind. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.
Which sums up as neatly as anything what I think the proper approach to luck should be. I am glad for the further evidence to support my argument that reading good fiction will make you a better poker player
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