Online casino gambling and sports betting are mind games almost as much as they are physical games.
The inherent nature of wagering leads people to develop cognitive biases that affect their habits. What’s more, casinos and sports betting operators capitalize on these biases to encourage you to keep playing.
Unfortunately, gambling cognitive biases can lead to poor decisions at best and addiction at worst. The good news is that we’re here to shed some light on the psychology behind the spins and wagers you make.
Learn more about the different types of gambling biases and tips for avoiding them. Plus, we’ll delve into top FAQs surrounding this topic.
More on Gambling Cognitive Biases
What Is a Cognitive Bias?
A cognitive bias is a psychological concept that leads people to process information in a way that creates a subjective reality. When people view the world through a cognitive bias (i.e. irrational beliefs), they might be unable to behave logically.
Cognitive biases apply to many facets of life including gambling. Many gamblers are easily sucked in for the pure adrenaline rush and the belief that one hand of gameplay is all it takes to turn their fortunes around.
That’s why you see some casino players and sports bettors continue to gamble despite massive losing streaks. Their cognitive bias causes all rational beliefs to go out the window and hold onto hope that their luck will soon turn around via continuous spins at a mega-progressive slot.
While cognitive biases are powerful, you don’t have to be completely at their mercy. Understanding the psychology of what goes through your mind when betting can help you maintain better control over your habits.
Types of Cognitive Biases
Part of the power of cognitive biases is that they come in many forms. By attacking logic from various angles, these biases can make it challenging for gamblers to play responsibly.
Take a look at the different types of cognitive biases so you can be aware of them and take preventative steps.
Recency Bias
Depending on where you’re from, you might know recency bias as the heuristic and availability bias. The recency bias suggests that gamblers and sports bettors base their wagering decisions purely on present and individual events, such as a specific betting style or habit. This bias is so strong that players tend to override rational beliefs from the recent or not-so-distant past that would help them make better gaming decisions.
Similar to an investor who buys or sells on impulse based on the hottest stock and not on the previous stock market performances, a gambler has the tendency to make a bet based on the hottest or most promoted games without researching. Their intuition might lead them to play a game with a high house edge and miserable RTP. In reality, a rational gambler would make the correct decision to stay as far away from these games as possible. However, some gamblers live in the false hope that their 3-card poker or blackjack game is about to turn around while ignoring the unfriendly odds.
As a result, problem gambling or a gambling disorder can quickly happen as you try to make up your losses because you once won based on a specific strategy. For instance, you might stick with a particular roulette number throughout the day because it helped you win big first thing in the morning. If you’re on a hot streak, you’d want to stick with the number since it seems like you can’t lose. If you’re cold, you might believe that the number has to win again eventually. After all, the main point of this bias is believing that if certain bets recently worked, why wouldn’t they work now to change your luck?
For online sports betting, you might have gained success making player props on the Dodgers’ Ohtani hitting his first home run of the season. This might lead you to bet on Ohtani hitting home runs for multiple games even if the trends suggest that the first home run was a bit of an anomaly.
Confirmation Bias
The confirmation bias for gamblers is the false belief that the research they might do will automatically lead to a winning bet. Despite clear opposing information that the gambler will likely lose, the bettors’ fallacy under confirmation bias is to only focus on the information that supports their winning idea. In other words, a person suspends reasonable beliefs and places the false hope that the outcome will be favorable.
From a psychological and a more healthy wagering point of view, the sports bettor or person should stop believing what they want to believe to happen and listen to unpleasant truths that are rooted in fact. Even for a professional bettor who’s mastered a strategy or is used to winning, it’s easy to lose control. They might fail to grasp that that strategy no longer works and slip into addictive behaviors under the confirmation bias model.
Case in point: if you play live roulette and read about using a strategy to double bets after a loss to get back to a winning path, the tendency is to focus on only that and wholeheartedly believe that the method will yield your desired outcome.
The Illusory Truth Effect
If seeing is believing, it’s easy to think that a bet or specific gambling technique should continue to work after it’s successful at least once.
With the illusory truth effect, ritualistic habits can quickly cause problem gambling to come to the surface. The illusory truth effect involves a bettor believing in pre-betting or pre-game rituals like carrying a lucky coin. If they win with this coin in their pocket, they might think that that’s all it takes to continue hitting successful bets.
The reality is that believing in superstitions has no impact on the random events that come with gambling or sports betting. To head off bad gambling behavior and problem gambling from the jump, these players should surround themselves with those who can think critically and share opinions that go against their core beliefs.
Hindsight
In common sayings, hindsight is 20/20. For gamblers, especially those battling gambling addiction, they think that losing couldn’t possibly stem from their disorder, lack of skill, or misunderstanding of the game’s rules.
No, they believe that they should’ve just taken a different approach to winning. Maybe they should’ve, but this way of thinking doesn’t change the past and won’t make future bets more successful.
For example, maybe you lost several video poker hands because you folded too easily. Since you’re convinced that pressing on would’ve yielded better results, you decide to fold less frequently even when you don’t have good cards.
Another example is if your big parlays keep losing, the false hindsight is to develop the tendency to only gamble three-leg parlays as opposed to five or only bet on Same Game Parlays. This erratic decision-making can easily turn into a total loss of control where you need professional help to manage your gambling problem.
Gambler’s Fallacy
Of all the biases, the gambler’s fallacy centers on problem gamblers tending to believe that a specific event impacts or determines outcomes. Even though logic tells us that each event usually stands alone, problem gamblers tend to believe they are all connected. As a result, they make erratic bets, hoping that luck or the supposed connected events will lead to a win.
For instance, imagine you’re playing roulette. If the ball lands on odd several times in a row, you might think that an even result has to come soon, so you put a lot of money on even. In reality, each spin is independent and won’t affect future spins. The odds are still 50/50 as to whether the ball lands on even or odd even if there was a streak of evens.
Outcome Bias
The outcome bias is one of the most common cognitive biases. It follows the notion that to get back to winning or correct betting mistakes, analyze what went wrong with the particular gamble or specific bet as opposed to breaking down the decision-making that led to things coming off the rails. One of the common sports betting mistakes is betting on a team, like the Denver Nuggets, based on how well they performed during the past week.
In reality, any team can win against any team on any given night. But even if the sports bet pays off, the mistake is thinking that it’s wise to continue betting on the strength of a team’s recent outcome. For traditional casino gaming, it’s easy to think that if you bet big, you have to win big, which will help you overcome losses. Not only is this gambler’s fallacy a quick way to go broke but a sure way to lose control of this gambling disorder.
Winning Streak
Going on a winning streak is the dream of all gamblers. You don’t have to be a high roller or a big spender to enjoy the thrills of a good-sized winning streak. Imagine playing live blackjack, and you have three blackjack hands in a row. The trap is coming up with the belief that no strategy is involved, or worse, that you can’t lose. This dangerous thinking pattern can lead to disastrous risk-taking that can land you in debt and destroy relationships.
Sports betting works similarly. You might be on a roll with moneyline bets in favor of the Braves, but betting on them to continue winning night after night isn’t necessarily the right move. Sports betting has a little more strategy involved than many casino games, but at the end of the day, many factors can affect a game’s outcome.
Belief in Luck/Expertise
When you first experience a successful bet, it’s common to chalk it up to beginner’s luck. Even more problematic is that if your first venture into gambling produces consistent wins, you develop beliefs that no skill or strategy is involved with gaming. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Because real money online casinos have to support fair and transparent results, the outcomes are random.
The same is true for sports betting. Just because your prop bets on Steph Curry to hit ten three-pointers worked for three-straight games, Curry won’t necessarily continue to make ten three-pointers.
Relying on responsible gambling habits and measures as opposed to sheer luck goes a long way to keeping you safe in the game.
In the same vein, when you win too easily or consistently, the belief might be that you have special insight or expertise, especially with sports betting. If you win with strategies like the D’alembert, the risk is making bets solely on that system, thinking that you’ve become a master.
Exaggerated Optimism
It’s one thing to feel confident. It’s another thing to think that every bet is worth the gamble.
With optimism bias, a scientific microscope examines the mindset of gamblers making bets on pure feeling or sheer hope of collecting the wins while overlooking gambling facts that say otherwise.
It’s common for gamblers to truly believe that they can control their gambling fate, which opens the door to destructive betting practices.
Sometimes, an inflated ego or the false notion that they know what they’re doing leads to ugly gambling habits or sports bets with no chance of success.
This illusionary gambling behavior can run so deep that they get stuck in their ways, thinking it’s the color of the shirt that they’re wearing or the fact that they did extensive research into sports betting odds.
For those who experience brief success gambling on sports, it might go to their head that they might have a special talent that others don’t, which only sets the stage for reckless gambling that brings them back down to reality.
Countering Cognitive Biases in Gambling
The biggest thing for gamblers is to always practice responsible gambling habits. An advantage of playing online is setting loss and spending limits so you don’t think you’re a legend in your mind and make a life-changing bet that sinks your ship. Once the session is up, you’re through making a bet for the day.
It also helps gamblers to research and consider professional opinions. Because problem gambling is a growing concern, educating yourself about going off on the deep end of spending and making reckless bets might help you not become another statistic.
Data Analysis
Non-profit organizations like Gambling Anonymous or a prominent university like Harvard take small sample sizes and surveys to determine why players bet in a particular way, even if it’s not in their best interests. Besides the games gamblers gravitate towards, reputable organizations closely analyze how long bettors gamble on sports or other casino games. Understanding these trends can help you determine potentially problematic habits of your own, and you can use this awareness to set better boundaries.
Recognizing RNGs
Licensed online casinos are responsible for having fair and random results. This is where a random number generator comes into play. To make sure the RNG is correctly functioning, professional casino companies will take small sample sizes from players and sports bettors to study their betting patterns and more so they can correctly audit and certify the results. It also goes with live dealer casino play so that the shuffle is above board.
When you recognize that the fate of your casino gambling is in the hands of an RNG, it might become clear that you have little control over your destiny and remind you to only play for fun.
Maintaining Objectivity
It’s essential for bettors to fully grasp that while a battle-tested strategy can help, wins and losses are random outcomes. Understanding this can help prevent reading too much into losses and wins so you can continue making sound wagers. Knowing when to quit and gambling responsibly go hand-in-hand with objective betting.
Frequently Asked Questions about Gambling Cognitive Biases
No matter what your casino cup of tea is, striving to have fun as opposed to obsessing over piling up the wins can help ward off problem gambling and gambling addiction. To help gamblers identify different biases, we’ve answered the FAQs below:
What is a cognitive bias in gambling?
It’s the psychology that explains why gamblers overlook logic and rationalize making obvious bad wagers. For instance, it can cause players to ignore the RTP or house edge in favor of superstitions.
How can you stop cognitive bias in gambling from impacting you?
Remain grounded, and only make realistic wagers. Of course, monitor your spending and quit while you’re ahead before all is lost.
What is the gambler’s fallacy of cognitive biases?
The gambler’s fallacy is a specific cognitive bias that involves the belief that independent past events affect independent future events. The most simple example involves a coin flip—imagine that you flipped a coin 10 times in a row, and it appeared as heads every time.
The gambler’s fallacy would leave some people to believe that the coin will likely appear as tails on the 11th flip since heads has already shown so many times. However, the coin appearing as tails on the 11th flip is still 50/50 regardless of what previous outcomes were.
