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Darcy Keith was lucky to survive a horrific crash, but recovery's been hard.(Photo by Heather Charles/ The Star)

Businessman Tim Ramsey counts on Lady Luck most in pro poker events. (Frank Espich / The Star)

Kyle Bloom is lucky enough to have hit two holes-in-one. (Steve Healey / The Star)

'The luck of the Irish."

What the term even means is heavily debated.

Is it a simple leprechaun and pot-of-gold thing?

Is it a pejorative term, used to point out that millions of Irishmen once starved to death raising crops for English landlords?

Or is it a simple insult -- that the Irish would rule the world were it not for Irish whiskey?

The most common interpretation of the term is that good fortune is usually 8accompanied by bad fortune -- a kind of karmic Murphy's Law.

Here are a few folks who have been lucky in one way or another, reflecting on their own luck, and on the notion that the luck of the Irish can be taken away just as swiftly as it appears.

Kyle Bloom, 34

The head golf pro at Hillcrest Country Club has hit two holes-in-one.

People pay $50 per half-hour to be instructed by this swing doctor, but don't think that makes it any less lucky that Kyle Bloom has two holes-in-one in his bag. The odds of the average golfer getting one are said to be roughly 1 in 20,000. (The odds for Tiger Woods are around 1 in 5,000.)

Bloom got his first ace playing 9 holes the morning before a tournament, a 221-yard four wood that no one but a groundskeeper saw. His second was a downwind seven iron, 176 yards, with friends looking on.

"There's nothing like it. It's like you're part of the club," Bloom said. "It's funny, because obviously better golfers have better odds, but the odds of getting a hole-in-one are so slim. You gotta get that little ball to finish in that little cup."

Luck of the Irish factor: High

After most holes-in-one, the golfer is expected to buy drinks for the whole bar. Bloom got out of that obligation, but he wasn't so lucky in the tournament later that day. "It ended in a shootout, and I believe I got eliminated on the first hole," he said. "That was as bad a hole as I've played in years."

Darcy Keith, 38

*This business analyst for State Auto Insurance survived a serious car accident with severe brain trauma.*

One moment, Darcy Keith was an intelligent, attractive, 22-year-old actuarial science student at Ball State University on the road home with four sorority sisters from a trip to Kentucky.

The next she was in a hospital bed, two of her friends dead, her brain bleeding, trying to overcome paralysis, relearning how to bathe, dress and feed herself. She was in a coma, then a wheelchair, then adult diapers. But she was alive, a lucky surprise in itself.

"Some people say you're lucky and some people say it's God's provision," Keith said. "I believe in God's grace. My injury has given me a whole new approach to life. It's given me a purpose. ..... I like to think you create your own luck."

Luck of the Irish factor: Medium

Keith survived. She mostly recovered from the devastating injuries she suffered when she was 22. But she still suffers vertigo, memory loss, and body weakness. "You don't want to sound ungrateful," she said. "But for someone who used to be really into sports, not being able to do certain things really impacts your freedom."

Tim Ramsey, 38

This former Lilly employee and CEO of a genetic testing company is also a professional gambler.

Tim Ramsey doesn't want to say how much he raked in through his biggest poker win.

It was less than $1.million, but more than $35,000. And we can tell you that since he took an interest in poker during the online boom in the earlier part of the decade, he has done well enough not to sweat over the 10 grand it costs to enter the World Series of Poker every year.

"I've done well," he said coyly. "Let's say I'm not crying over the loss of $10,000."

Ramsey, a man who plays high-stakes games of chance against poker luminaries like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth and Phil Ivey, is somewhat pragmatic about luck.

"In any given hand, luck can be a big determiner. Over the long run, not so much," he said. "If you play enough times, that's when the skill comes into play."

Luck of the Irish factor: Low

Ramsey really doesn't have a hard-luck story, but he's spent enough time at the table to have heard a few.

"You hear many, many stories of people who have that one big tournament win, and then lose all the money. I have been fortunate to have several of the wins and not the losses."

Mind you, his World Series of Poker story is tinged with bad luck. "My history in that tournament is the story of horrible, horrible beats. I'll flop a full house and lose to four of a kind."

What makes the Irish so lucky?

Jason Kelly, a professor in the Department of History at IUPUI, said the best academic explanation he could find for the term "luck of the Irish" suggests it came into use in the United States around the 1890s, in the wake of a discovery by some successful Irish businessmen with a mining interest.

"They were mining on the Comstock lode in Nevada in 1873 when they discovered a rich body of ore, which became known as 'the big bonanza'," Kelly said. "And because of their success, the term 'luck of the Irish' developed in their wake."