This is a mathematical way of formalizing a principle you already know: the richer you are, the more risks you can afford to take. Bets like the one above are like risky stock investments with a positive expected dollar payoff; if you make a lot of these investments, you might sometimes lose a bunch of cash at once, but in the long run you’ll come out ahead. The rich person, who has enough reserves to absorb those occasional losses, invests and gets richer; the nonrich people stay right where they are.
