Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Gambler's Fallacy
In the past few years I have been around gambling a descent amount with friends and me as well. This gambling could include gambling on sporting events, or simply gambling on card games with other friends. However, after learning about gambler's fallacy I began to notice a few patterns, specifically about one case involving a friend. Lastyear my friend was gambling on some sporting events that had no relation to one another, just a variety of games, and after winning a few, he began to lose consistently. As time continued, he kept betting and luck just didn't seem to be going his way. Although he had no reason to believe this, he started to think that there was no way his luck would continue to be this bad and thought that he had to win the games. Because of this, instead of stopping and cutting his losses, he continued to bet on different with the thought that he had to win, but it didn't turn out this way. Eventually it got to the point where he had no money and simply couldn't gamble anymore. After learning about decision making and gambler's fallacy, I was able to understand more about why he gambled the way he did and his thought process.
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I have watched, on more than one occasion, in the casino with one of my friends experiencing the same situation. He was playing blackjack and just continued losing hands. His strategy was simple, bet 5 bucks on a hand, if he lost it he would put 10 on the next hand, if he lost that one he would put 20 on the next hand and so on. The rationale behind that being that he would never really lose a lot of money unless he somehow lost a lot of hands in a row, which apparently seemed unlikely to him. Well, this turned out to be a great downfall for him and he ended up losing all the money he had won the night before in a matter of 45 minutes that night. Proving that the gamblers fallacy is definitely true for most risk-takers.
ReplyDeleteI too have witnessed an example of gambler's fallacy. My grandmother plays the lottery every day. She honestly believes the more she plays, her chnace of winning becomes greater. I started to realize she had a problem when she started spending more money on the tickets than what she was winning. Gambler's fallacy is not something one is able to immediately notice, it took me almost 5 years to understand that my grandmother had a problem.
ReplyDeletei believe that everyone has some sort of gambler's fallacy in them. reason being is because everyone wants to believe that they obtain some sort of luck. thus giving people the idea if they play lottery, slots , or any other game involving gambling. people tend to create an idea that either they have more luck than the person who played before them or the idea that playing longer only helps your chances of winning. i believe that the severity of gamblers fallacy is what psychologists should look further into
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