Kenny Rogers was right.
“If you’re gonna play the game, you gotta learn to play it right”.
It’s Safer Gambling Week so we’re taking you back to school to teach you how your brain tricks you when you gamble – and what you can do to play smarter (and safer).
- The Gambler’s Fallacy
- The Near-Miss Effect
- Selective Memory (Recall Bias)
- How You Can Give Yourself An Advantage
- Retrain Your Brain – Take a Break Bingo
3. The Gambler’s fallacy
Perhaps one of the best known terms in gambling.
The gambler’s fallacy is the mistaken belief that past random events influence future outcomes.
How Your Brain Tricks You: You see a series of results and believe there is a pattern e.g.: after a run of five “reds” on a roulette wheel, you feel black is “due” to occur.
What Actually Happens: Since each spin is an independent event, the probability does not change, but the brain incorrectly perceives a pattern
How to Play Smarter: Ignore any patterns, see each new bet as distinct from any others.
2. The Near-Miss Effect:
You get two winning symbols on a slot machine line, but the third is a non-match.
Research shows the brain’s reward system activates almost as strongly for a near-miss as it does for a win, so you feel like you’re close to winning.
How Your Brain Tricks You: You have a near-miss and get a feeling that you “almost” won, making you feel like a win is close and giving you the desire to bet again.
What Actually Happens: You have a couple near misses, and like with the Gambler’s Fallacy, you feel like you are close to winning, but in reality the outcome remains totally random and your next bets aren’t influenced by previous ones.
How to Play Smarter: See a loss as a loss, and tell yourself that there’s no such thing as a near-miss in gambling.
1. Selective Memory (Recall Bias):
Your brain tends to vividly remember and focus on wins while discounting, rationalising, or quickly forgetting losses.
How Your Brain Tricks You: Wins create a deeper impression and are more memorable, your brain tags wins as highly significant, so you recall them more easily.
What Actually Happens: This selective memory creates an inaccurate perception of your overall gambling success, reinforcing the belief that you are a net winner or that the next win is imminent.
How to Play Smarter: Deposit limits are an easy way to track your spending without you needing to do anything. Most online casino sites will also show your profit and loss over a period of time.
How You Can Give Yourself An Advantage
This is the easy bit. All you have to do is remember that you have no control over the outcomes – BUT you do have control over how you play.
- Make sure to remember your losses as well as your wins, and to learn from your losses.
- Remember that your brain can trick you when you play, take a step back and make rational decisions, not impulsive ones.
- Use every tool the gambling sites give you (deposit limits, session reminders) – these help your brain remember.
It may be Safer Gambling Week, but these are lessons you can use forever.
Retrain Your Brain – Take a Break Bingo
It’s so easy to get caught up in the dopamine rush, and to keep wanting that rush. That’s totally normal.
You have to retrain your brain to get dopamine out of other activities and we’ve developed a fun way to start:
And the next time you’re next playing, remember, Kenny Rogers was right.
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