Getting Lucky and Going for Broke: Chance, Probability and the Percentage Game

Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, University of London)

In this talk I will think about the nature of chance and luck in sports, beginning from the intriguing fact that, while the playing of sports attempts to minimise the role of chance, the structure and conditions of sport aim to maximise the exposure to it and intensify its effects. By considering the intercourse of the rational (tactic and calculation) and the irrational (luck, superstition and gambling) in sport, I will try to earn the conclusion that sport is itself a kind of practical philosophy of chance.