Part 1 · Your turn
Six biases, six things we tell ourselves
Each card shows something we often tell ourselves. Click to turn it over and read what is true.
A bias is an error of reasoning that everyone makes without realising it. Biases do not disappear with experience: even the most seasoned bettors fall for them. Knowing them, and seeing them at work in simulations, is the best way to protect yourself from them.
Each card shows something we often tell ourselves. Click to turn it over and read what is true.
“I have lost five times, my luck is bound to turn.” Let us check. We simulate thousands of bets, each with a 60 % chance of winning, independent of one another. Then we compare the win rate of all bets with that of the bets placed just after five losses in a row.
How to read it: the two rates are almost identical, and the gap changes direction from one simulation to the next. The next bet does not “know” what happened before. A run of losses does not make the next bet safer, and a run of wins does not make it riskier.
Twenty bet results will scroll past. Wins shine, sometimes very brightly; losses pass by in grey. Watch carefully, then estimate how many bets were won.
Why we get it wrong: a win leaves a stronger mark than a loss, especially a big win. We remember successes better and forget ordinary losses. Only a betting log, kept up to date with every bet, tells the truth (module 4).
One idea comes up often: after a loss, double the stake so as to recover everything with the next win. Watch the size of the stake, as a multiple of the starting stake, as the losses pile up.
How to read it: after 7 losses in a row, the stake is 128 times the starting stake. Yet, with bets won 6 times out of 10, a run of at least 7 losses happens in about 9 % of sequences of 100 bets, and in about 39 % of sequences of 500 bets (calculation). Raising stakes after a loss does not wipe out the losses: it makes them grow faster. This is the heart of the cycle described in lesson 3.1.
Biases act at the moment of deciding, often in the heat of an emotion. The defence is therefore to decide beforehand, with a cool head, and to write down what you have decided.
A deposit limit and a stake limit on the licensed site (lesson 3.3), set on a calm day.
The same stake unit for every bet, whatever the previous results (module 4).
Every bet recorded, won or lost, at the moment it is settled. Memory is no substitute for the log.
7 questions. You need 6 correct answers to pass the lesson.
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