Topic: The Gambler's Fallacy (The key to unbiased gambling) - page 3. (Read 995 times)

This is somehow true, we have to be aware and accept this reality so we can do the right action in gambling.
When we gamble with our emotion, that will make us fail, we should learn to control our emotion and always focus on the method and learn to correctly implement it throughout the game. Being realistic is always necessary as this risk can only be seen if we are realistic.

Why thank you! Ever since bitcoin dice came around along with the ability to roll millions of rolls in weeks, I've been enjoying martingaling. Of course, lower house edges, microbetting, all these allow for 20+ streaks that regular roulette never could. Amazing if you think about what a relatively simple script and a new currency could do to change things up! Oh and racking up wagering amounts along the way.

It's all for fun in the end, and it has been fun thus far, and we really need to come to terms (and in my case, happily embrace it) with what it is to really enjoy it =D

Thanks and see you on the other side of gambler's fallacy

Employing betting strategies (such as a martingale) cannot alter the odds in the long run. However, as you said: you are never going to gamble enough to achieve a large enough sample. You are legitimately the first person I have met who understands martingale and the odds, but still uses the method. Good luck on those joy rides

Which is why, when I am on a joy ride of martingale, I don't think of streaks nor do I think of # of bets, nor do I think of changing my targets as I get closer to them. I generally have a capital, a fixed target, and then I go on the joy ride, martingaling, and then allowing 1 of 2 things to happen: I bust because that maximum losing streak has hit me, or I achieve my target and get in profit.

I've been asked about the latter and yes I could simply get the same result in 1 bet (and probability is the same!) but this way, I gain more wagering amounts, which generally gives me some edge later.

The point is, I know that no matter how many times I bust, doesn't affect my probability for the next round. And conversely, I could always get in profit and never bust, because I will never gamble enough to achieve a large enough sample =)

That is again, false. I think you are not realizing the independence of events, here is a good explanation:

"While a run of five heads has a probability of 1/32 = 0.03125 (a little over 3%), the misunderstanding lies in not realizing that this is the case only before the first coin is tossed. After the first four tosses, the results are no longer unknown, so their probabilities are at that point equal to 1 (100%). The reasoning that it is more likely that a fifth toss is more likely to be tails because the previous four tosses were heads, with a run of luck in the past influencing the odds in the future, forms the basis of the fallacy."

To add on a little more, I think you are speaking of statistical regularity "or a notion in statistics and probability theory that random events exhibit regularity when repeated enough times or that enough sufficiently similar random events exhibit regularity. It is an umbrella term that covers the law of large numbers, all central limit theorems and ergodic theorems."

It is commonly confused with the gambler's fallacy:

"This phenomenon should not be confused with the gambler's fallacy, because regularity only refers to the (possibly very) long run. The gambler's fallacy does not apply to statistical regularity because the latter considers the whole rather than individual cases."

No the gaussian law says that the expected probability tends to be respected if the game is really random.
Look at the chart above.

The odds don't change at all based on streaks, because people often think parts need to be representative of the whole leading to the erroneous belief that streaks must even out.

You can disagree all you want, but it's a statistical fact. You are more inclined to think that the odds are different because your brain tries to play tricks on you.

I disagree with that if you bet 20times on the same side and you lose, the odds are not the same for the next flip (if the flips are really random).
It doesn't mean you'll have 100% chances to win but you'll have more than 50% chances to win...

How do you explain that then?


On 50 000 runs of 32 flips, 0 runs gave less than 6 heads. But more than 7000 gave exactly 16 heads and 16 tails...
So you have more chances to get 9 tails and 1heads or 5tails and 5heads?

Exactly, this reminds me of the physiocratic fallacy as well. Anyways, it is well said that gambling is just investment for entertainment. It is better to enjoy the game rather than expecting for money in the game. You might get occasional money as well but on the average, a normal man lose more than he win. In sports gambling, you might make some money but I am not really sure about poker and others.

Exactly. When it all comes down to it, gambling is just a form of entertainment. Just like spending $20 to go see a movie, some people prefer to play a hand or two. If you do everything in moderation then you will never have an issue.

Probably fair? We shouldn't be using that term at all. You know it, games are provably fair and not probably. The entire fallacy wouldn't make sense if a player is betting on a rigged site. On provability fair games, the probability may or may not even out.

Being too emotional leads the gamblers to lose more, as they keep following emotions from game after game that they've played, if you can hold your
emotions and deal with this activity with good form and right attitude you'll not going to find yourself being too much addicted it will not ruin your life and you can easily go and move forward every time you deal with this activities whatever the results.

I agree, you cannot bring the house down however you try, there are few that are going to be lucky in a game of gambling in a particular day but the majority will have bad luck playing games, our government is right to create more casinos in our country it's a good revenue-generating venture

It's the idea that the previous results change the odds on the next. In your mind if 9 are tails in a row you think it just can't be tails in a row that would be insane and think of it as a 1/10 result and 10% chance but it's really 50/50.

I don't really think it's fair to compare slots or dice to "evolutionary gambling", they are just to completely different things. Psychologically we are awful at games of chance, and there are a lot of reasons for this. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we aren't computers, we can't calculate risk and statistical outcomes very easily, and to relate back to evolutionary "gambles": these were fairly simple. There was no 1 in 200 million odds to win the lottery, it was more like 20 men vs 5. I think this is the main reason we fail at gambling, it's very hard for us to understand the mathematics behind it all.

I don't think that chasing the money will be the best aspects of gambling addiction because if we thoughts behind that, we have a big chance to miss all of the money. Besides that, we know that we cannot recover the loss of the money and no matter we try hard, we still hard to get the money's back. So when you still have time to quit, make sure you can quit gambling as soon as possible and don't wait until your money reduces too big.

This is the thinking of ordinary people who don’t understand gambling, they see people who goes to casinos are bad but we can’t deny the fact that a lot of gamblers becomes addict as well. Gamble excess money, stay fit and always have fun. Gambling is not always take profit, its bad if you do bad decisions and take more greed.

This is a good read and a nice article which composed of explaining the psychology behind gambling. But what makes gambling contagious and dangerous at the same time is the addiction and satisfaction that we garner especially when we experience a winning streak in the game. This creates an biased impression that gambling may be favorable to you, resulting to a continuous betting of your money. From this experience, you would deem to think that every bet that you make will garner you returns of cash.

That is where the problem exists. When you have that kind of mindset, it would slowly cloud your judgement and decision making skills which would aggravate your situation into losing your cash. After that, it would cascade thinking that the only way to overcome your losses is to gamble again. From this alone, this creates an endless cycle wherein you gamble and gamble until every cash is drained.

Gambling will never be existed if owners never sees any potentiality that it will grow and even get profitable.
Now, if if we think that gambling isn't good supposedly the government never allow it to be presented in the community but they are, this simply means that gambling is legal. Those people get addicted in gambling is not because of this, but it is their choice to be like that.

Very true, I think another important thing to realize (especially for non-gamblers) is that it's never as easy as it sounds. People always tell you to "cash out" and then laugh when you lose, but then they do the exact same thing. The psychological tricks our minds play on us can cloud our judgement very easily.

But I completely agree with you about "don't gamble what you can't afford", I think most people on BT (that I've heard from so far) view gambling as more of a form of entertainment: which I believe is the correct and best way to look at it. And as the old adage goes: "never chase the dragon".