Gambler’s Fallacy: What’s It and How to Avoid It?

When enjoying casino gambling online or at a land-based venue, almost every casino player wants to make decisions that will help them make the most of their casino gaming action. But in reality, many casino players often have biases that impact how they play.

Gambler’s fallacy is a traditional casino gambling “blind spot” that affects the playing decisions of many casino players. Here’s an article that details this gambling bias and how you can avoid it when playing casino games at our new mobile casino.

Gambler’s fallacy explained.

Gambler’s fallacy is a mistaken notion that the past outcomes of that event influence the probability of future events. Casino players who fall for this bias believe that if a particular result has occurred more frequently, it has fewer chances of happening in the future. Similarly, if a result has appeared less than usual, it has a higher chance of appearing in the future.

The simplest way to understand this casino gambling bias is to take the example of a casino toss. Let’s say you toss a coin five times, and it shows tails all five times. At this point, many casino players will tend to go with one of the two ways of thinking:

• As the result of the coin toss has been heads for so many times, the outcome will likely be a head on the next coin toss.
• As the result of the coin toss has been heads for so many times, the outcome will likely be a tail on the upcoming coin toss.

However, this is nothing more than a gambler’s fallacy in action. In reality, the results of previous coin flips don’t matter. Every time a coin is flipped, the chances of it showing a head or a tail are precisely the same.

This is a fundamental concept to understand as a casino player, whether you enjoy playing casino table games such as online Blackjack or Craps or prefer instant-win titles like slots and Bingo.

A casino player experiencing a losing streak may think his bad luck will end if he continues playing. Similarly, a player who’s on a winning streak may go on to place huge bets since they believe lady luck is favouring them.

Examples of gambler’s fallacy across different casino titles

Below we’ve detailed how this casino gambling bias applies to some popular casino titles:

Slots – If you’ve visited a land-based gambling venue, you might have seen the gambler’s fallacy at work. Let’s say a player has been playing on a particular slot machine for a while but hasn’t landed a winning combination. So, believing the machine isn’t lucky, the player switches to the next machine.

When the player leaves the first machine, someone else takes his spot, believing the game will soon pay. But just like online slot games, physical slot machines use an RNG system to generate unexpected results. So, the upcoming results of the slot machine won’t be influenced by the outcome of previous spins.

Roulette – Roulette offers another excellent example of how casino players can fall for the gambling bias. If a specific number combination frequently appears as you play Roulette online, you may believe the number group will keep appearing. But again, this is nothing else than you succumbing to fallacy bias.

How to avoid the gambler’s fallacy?

By understanding what gambler’s fallacy is, you’ve taken your first step towards avoiding this casino gambling bias. When playing online Bingo or other online casino games where you may fall for the gambler’s fallacy, you should remember that these games don’t have any memory. As such, the results of the past gameplay rounds won’t influence your upcoming gaming sessions.

For players who are finding it hard to control their casino gambling behaviours, we suggest you take the help of responsible gambling tools. And if you’re entirely new to online casino gaming, you can first opt to play at social casinos and then switch to real money platforms. Have a responsible gambling experience there!