ucky Lenny

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

The Baron’s chief advisor, Professor Hamblin, was a former university professor. Frequently, the Baron would ask the Professor for his advice on countless subjects usually relating to the management of Lilliland. Occasionally, a philosophical question would come up and the Professor was invited to Lilliland Castle for dinner and a discussion of the issue at hand.

The Baron’s fiancée, Lady Angela of Alpine Castle, was always invited to participate in these discussions because one day she would be the Baroness of Lilliland.

The question at one particular dinner party was that of a citizen known as Lucky Lenny. Everyone thought that Lenny deserved his nickname because he seemed to be lucky at almost everything he did. Lenny had a brother named Billy. Billy had been given the nickname Unlucky Billy because everything he tried usually fells apart and was unsuccessful.

The Baron asked the Professor if some people were really lucky by nature, and others unlucky.

Since the Professor had some advance warning of the topic of the evening, he was able to review some of his thoughts and researched the question of lucky people.

Lady Angela asked if the Professor thought that some people were just born under a lucky star, or was there some logical reason for the good luck?

The discussion became very lively during dinner but as dessert arrived, it was time for the Professor to conclude his observations on the question. The Professor said that lucky people, in deciding on a course of action, would ask themselves some questions. Not just about how much they really knew about the venture, or what experiences they had in the past with similar situations, but most importantly, what were the chances of success?

In other words, the Lucky Lenny type would ask realistically, what are the odds of success? If the answer was that the odds are better than even they tended to move forward in the matter. If the odds were less than even, they held back in the matter.

The Professor said that the lucky people knew and played percentages. They would not commit unless their chances of winning were in their favor. That is why they won most of the time.