For those who might be looking, I'll stick it here. And I'll be a little broad and paraphrase.
"Cold Reading" is a term which describes a procedure used by a certain type of stage performer. The idea is simple enough - find a person which one has never met or talked with before ("cold") and use what one can pick up about their body language, mannerisms, dress, chosen words, inflection, et cetera to make statements and/or ask questions intending to pick up more information about them ("reading"). The overall goal is to get information out of the person being spoken to/with . . . without necessarily asking for it directly. What is done with the information gathered through the process is . . . a thorny issue which can stray to potentially legal entanglements with the word choice.
The key component from where I referenced it would be how people can remember successes more than failures, and this emboldens them to continue instead of backing away. When long odds hit the money, people might remember that more vividly than the number of times missed leading up to it.