Games of skill and luck, gambler fallacy.

Gambling has been around since the dawn of humanity. Archeologists have found artifacts that suggest games of skill or luck all over the world, some of these dated in pre-historic times. Dices carved in Ivory older than 3000 years were found in Egypt.

The saying “voluntary taxes” was common wisdom as far back as the 14th and 15th century when religious communities organized lotteries to fund their organizations when in lack of regular income or during lean times. Paintings that were made in the 16th century depict people playing card games.

It is very possible that individuals, ever keen to compete and measure skills to establish hierarchical relations have always been attracted to games involving skill and luck. While during childhood competition is seen as a natural element in the process of maturing, in adulthood it is regarded as a way to socialize and pass time.

There are many types of games and all of them revolve around skills, rules, luck, memory, intuition, stamina and intelligence. It was only natural for science to delve into this phenomenon to try and define what it was that made people enjoy this type of activity so much.

According to the NHI, the National Institutes of Health, results of tests conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and two other institutions suggest that the same mental circuitry is involved in the highs and lows of winning money, abusing drugs, or anticipating a tasty meal.

This establishes a formal scientific link between the activity of engaging in games of chance and pleasure. It would seem that the incentive of money produced blood flow changes in the brain similar to those seen in response to other forms of rewards, such as euphoria-producing drugs; moreover, the right side of the brain responded predominantly to winning or the prospect of winning, while the left side of the brain responded to losing.

This is helping the scientific community in their research to finding remedies that will cure afflictions like drug or gambling addiction. As ever, its all about individual perception and this happens in the brain, where gambler’s fallacy easily leads people into thinking or believing they can beat the odds.

Gambler’s fallacy has its roots in every individuals’ capacity to measure probability by intuition. If you flip a coin ten times and the result is five consecutive “heads”, chances are many people will be inclined to bet that throw number six will result in a “tails”. This is contradicted by mathematics and logic.

Unfortunately for the people placing a wager on throw number six, the odds of this individual event remain at 50%, or one in two. Over time, that is, if the coin were to be tossed, say, ten thousand times, the number of “heads” results would roughly match the number of “tails” results. This doesn’t exclude ten consecutive same outcomes, but nothing guarantees this, let alone allow anyone to accurately predict the result of any event.