Understanding the Gaming Fallacy and How To Avoid It

When it comes to gambling, whether it’s online or not, there will always be a chance that people would make illogical decisions. Some aren’t even aware that the next move they have in mind is illogical and if you’re after profiting and keeping things realistic, you should be aware of the mistakes that you might end up making and this includes the gambler’s fallacy which is commonly seen on beginners and casual gamblers.

The gambler’s fallacy is defined as a mistaken belief that if an event has taken place frequently than expected then it’s less likely to occur in the future. To be gambling-specific, some people come to Win real money from online casino who would think that if a slot machine has not been giving them a win for multiple spins in a row now then the next spin may just be the win that they are waiting for.

When it comes to sports betting, this occurs if a punter has been placing bets on a certain team or athlete multiple times in a row but ended up losing and keeps on thinking that the next bet is going to be a win.

Why The Gamblers Fallacy Will Set You To Fail as a Gambler

This fallacy is also known as the Monte Carlo Fallacy because this particular behavior was observed at a Monte Carlo Casino in 1913 wherein a group of people was playing a game of roulette. During the said game, the ball has landed on black 26 times in a row and this was a rare occurrence as this happening is just 1 chance in 136.8 million.

That night, the casino was able to rake in millions of Francs and this was because the players on the table fell as the victims of the gambler’s fallacy. Some players kept on believing that the ball will land on red 26 times and this resulted in them experiencing massive losses.

Gambler’s fallacy is an example of cognitive biases which is stemming from the human nature of seeing patterns in random sequences of events. It’s simply human nature to somehow believe that the future will change based on the consistent unchanging events when in reality, these events happening multiple times are not at all connected and don’t affect each other.

When betting on sports, it is wrong to think that you should no longer place a bet on a certain team or athlete just because they lost two or three of their previous matches. Their next match has nothing to do with the previous ones because they had different opponents. The matches are simply unrelated.

The gambler’s fallacy is not exclusive to gamblers or any gambling-related activities. This behavior can also be observed in different life situations as well. A great example is how when couples would try to predict the gender of their child during pregnancy. Some couples tend to think that they will finally have a baby boy after having three daughters or vice versa. This is, of course, not an accurate way of telling what the gender of their next child would be as having three girls don’t change the 50/50 chance that they have when it comes to the gender of their next kid.

There is also a gambler’s fallacy when it comes to how people view air travel. Some people think that just because they travel on air a lot they will eventually experience a crash at some point. However, this is also not accurate as each flight has nothing to do with their previous ones. Statistics say that a person’s chances of experiencing a plane crash are one in 1.2 million.

Avoiding Gambler’s Fallacy

While it’s common for people to experience cognitive biases like the gambler’s fallacy, there are effective ways to avoid it. However, some people may have a hard time losing these biases. Implementing various debiasing techniques may be necessary but overall, what you just really need to do is to be more aware of the situation. You need to be able to treat each event as something new and not at all related to the previous events. This way, you avoid concluding the future solely based on what has happened previously.

You can do this by improving your decision-making skills and trying to slow down your reasoning process. You should also be aware that the more we get older, the more likely we are prone to having biases. With that, it’s important to keep on practicing randomness.

Some psychologists have taken a look at teaching individuals about randomness. Christopher Roney and Lana Trick published a study on this and according to them, randomness can make people less prone to gambler’s fallacy.