Gambling fallacy is the fallacy of the chances’ maturity. In other words, this is a belief that when one event occurs more times than normal at one point, it is less likely to act this way in the future – and vice versa. These events are statistically independent and commonly associated with gambling, though this psychological phenomenon can definitely occur elsewhere, too.
When a person attempts to rationalize their future manoeuvres in situations with elements of randomness, they can be guided by the gambling fallacy in the attempt to predict what happens next. As you can assume, gambling fallacies are most common among problem gamblers.
What are the Different Gambling Fallacies?
There is no full or definite list of gambling fallaciesavailable anywhere since, after all, this is one type of a cognitive bias. As a result, there’s a debate surrounding defining the fallacy of online poker gambling or any type of gambling for that matter.
That being said, you can come across various fallacies if you do a bit of a research. There’s the distinction between culture and gambling fallacies to begin with. But the fact remains that fallacies are present all around, even among players who gamble at lowest deposit casino and those who play at a physical, live casino.
Here are the four most popular and frequently found fallacies in the casino world:
Monte-Carlo Fallacy
This fallacy is so popular that some people even refer to gambling fallacies with this name. This is the classic example, the one related to the failure to understand random events and their independence. The results of this fallacy are people who bet on the opposite outcome to occur because they believe that statistical deviations in one will be corrected by statistical deviations in the other direction, just for the purpose of evening things out.
Monte-Carlo fallacy is the reason for some of the top gambling mistakes made by casino players. For example, a person who believes in this trusts that if a gambling machine hasn’t paid out in a while, it will most likely pay out in the short future, and vice versa.
Another example is the belief that if you choose an orderly sequence of numbers like 1, 2, 3 etc., you are more likely to win compared to a non-orderly sequence.
Have you done this before? Many players who’ve played casino games like the pokies NZ real money use this logic behind picking the pokies and machine they play on.
Hot Hand Fallacy
Gambling devices like wheels and machines are programmed to produce random outcomes. This would mean that the past outcomes have absolutely no influence on future outcomes. However, some people believe that a winning streak on a single device will portend more winning. A similar belief under this casino fallacy is that certain winning numbers will re-appear more frequently than other numbers.
And of course, there’s the hot hand belief in sport betting when people believe that they are more likely to win at a certain time because the luck has been on their side. This superstition is present with many players despite the data from research that shows that random chance is most frequent with sports betting.
Illusion of Control
The next common tendency among gamblers is to believe that the action of a person can influence random events. For example, many people today prefer some ‘lucky numbers’ over others when playing lottery or the roulette. They always pick these numbers instead of choosing random numbers. This is more of a superstitious belief when people think they have control over the outcome of gambling. In fact, superstitious conditioning contributes to this type of illusion.
Thinking that you have control over the lottery numbers can cause you to make repetitive mistakes, therefore reducing your chances to win. Gambling is random and should be perceived as such.
Base Rate Neglect
Lastly, there’s the so-called base rate neglect. This fallacy occurs when people ignore the general probabilities based on statistics when they judge the frequency of an outcome. Instead, they estimate the frequency by the available instances in their memory.
Base rate neglect if the belief that if you participate in commercial forms of gambling, this is an excellent strategy for making money. Or, there’s the belief that winning the lottery is more likely to happen to you if you are aware of the number of people who have won the lottery over the years.
Are there other fallacies?
There are, of course, many other known logical fallacies, many of which are evident in the world of gambling. However, no one can surely determine or categorize the existing fallacies.
One interesting example is that of the sceptical inquirer gambling fallacies. According to this source, there are two twin fallacies – one of appeal to sanctity, and one of appeal to righteous indignation. Both attempt to shield the ideas from criticism, investigation or discussion and are rather common. Even so, these are not so frequently found in the gambling industry.
How to Avoid Logical Fallacies
Naturally, logical fallacies are not a great idea when you’re gambling with real money. To avoid them, you can implement one of two techniques: deductive or inductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning happens when you start with general premises and move toward a more specific, more certain conclusion. Inductive reasoning happens when you start with a specific premise and reach a generalized conclusion.
The bottom line
Logical fallacy is only true until you start looking at it from a logical perspective. If you know how to detect a fallacy, you’ll realize that this is not the right approach. In return, this could save you from many gambling mistakes. Fallacies are common and superstition-like. They are all around and specifically created to mislead people. Those who believe in fallacies believe that logic has nothing to do with their gambling outcome. They find logic in strange superstitions that are implied by others.
