The psychology of bettng every spin

I’ve only recently discovered this forum and think it is great. I play roulette occasionally, maybe once or twice a year. I am fully aware of Gamblers Fallacy but I use it primarily because it gives my mind something to do in between spins. It’s much easier for my brain to falsely calculate a bet, then to just guess a random number or bet on my ‘lucky’ number every time. Guessing gets a bit tedious for me after a few bets, so I pretend that looking for patterns will guide the bets, knowing full-well it is meaningless. That may explain why I rarely go to a casino more than once a year. In my fantasy way of picking a number I will often wait for overlapping factors to pick a number. The simplest is, for example, waiting for when there are 4 or 5 blacks in a row, while there might be a similar run of even numbers. So in my delusional mind, I pick a red, odd number or a street which feature this combination in higher combination, such as 1-3. I know it’s wrong but I can’t help but do it. This got me thinking about ‘systems’. Apart from the fact they don’t seem much fun and risky, why do they seem to insist on betting every spin? It’s a hard question to answer because they don’t work, but what are everyone’s thoughts on the psychology behind the occurrence of needing to bet every time in systems? Is this just a consequence of the ‘memory effect’ that the fallacy is built on, or something else?

People who are playing losing systems, whether they know it or not, get lumped in to the general population that are there playing for entertainment. If you're playing for entertainment, I'd think it wouldn't be very fun to sit every other spin out. You're there to play, so when the next spin comes, it's time to play. Though, from a math perspective, it would definitely help to lose less if a player did play less spins... because of course the math is the best for the player when they play 0 spins =P.

Even though you realize that your system doesn't really help you win (and good for you for realizing that), it makes it more fun for you. So for that reason, keep doing it.

To answer your question, most people don't have that type of system, so betting on every spin makes it more fun for them.

Neither method is better than the other. In the long run, you're both up against the same house edge. Your bankroll lasts longer only because you're not betting every spin.


That said, may I make this suggestion:

Instead of waiting for a repeating event and betting against it, bet WITH it. For several reasons:

1 - If the streak continues, with your method, you probably will need to bet it again, and then may wind up chasing your losses, and get trapped by the Martingale system.

2 - If the streak ends and you win, you're back to waiting for some event to repeat.

3 - Bet with the streak and you may have multiple wins before you have to stop and wait for a repeating event.


As I've often said, for every guy who ever said, "Hey honey, look: six blacks in a row, let's bet on red," there was a guy who, not two minutes earlier said, "Hey honey, look: five blacks in a row, let's bet on red."