Playing roulette is much more than just choosing red or black, odds or evens, or betting on your ‘lucky number’. It’s a game of luck, but it plays on psychology just as much as it does on luck. How is that possible? Well, there have been many studies discussing the psychological effects of game like online live roulette that affect your bets, and we are here to discuss them.
Let’s say you have sat at a roulette table – be it in a live dealer game or at a land-based casino. There are several psychological ‘traps’ that can influence how much, how often, and how you bet. To be clear, just because they are called traps, it doesn’t mean that they are designed to trap you into the game to spend more. The house edge is the same, so statistically, your chances of winning are the same, but these psychological aspects like close call and even the noise of the spinning wheel can subtly push you into taking bigger risks.
Let’s look into the psychology of both land-based and online roulette India, the traps you can fall into, and how a solid betting strategy can help you avoid them.
Psychological Traps in Roulette
These are some of the most common psychological traps in this game that you can easily fall into even if you’re playing the best online roulette variants out there. They are inherent to the game, so it’s up to you to be aware of the traps and avoid them as much as possible.
The Near-Miss Effect: ‘I Almost Won’
One of the most common psychological traps in online roulette live is the near-miss effect. Picture this scenario: you place a bet on 23, and the ball lands on 10 – which is right next to 23. It’s a close call that makes you feel like you’re ‘almost there’ and that you missed out on a single pocket, which subconsciously makes you place another bet and try again. Maybe this time you’ll be luckier.
Numerous studies on gambling have shown that this ‘near-miss’ effect activates the reward centers in the brain and almost acts like an actual win, which will make you keep playing.
Chasing Losses and Loss Aversion
The theory of ‘chasing losses’ claims that humans tend to experience losses more intensely than wins. This is also known as ‘loss aversion’, and at roulette online casinos, it can make you raise your bets if you keep losing. You will try to ‘win back what you lost’, so this is also known as ‘chasing loses’. It’s one of the early signs of dealing with a gambling problem, but another sign is the excitement of early wins. They can also cause a sense of luck or even invincibility – thinking that you will always win.
This is a trap you can easily fall into if you’re not careful and if you don’t use a betting strategy. You will likely want to chase bigger, whether it is to win your losses back, or to celebrate wins. It can be an emotional roller coaster, so the best way to deal with this is by implementing a betting strategy.
Gambler’s Fallacy
The term ‘gambler’s fallacy’ has been used to describe myths and beliefs among roulette players that are not based on actual facts. For example, some online roulette real money India players believe that past events can influence the outcome of the following spins. For example, they believe in hot and cold numbers or think that if the ball has landed on Black five times in a row, it ‘must’ land on Red the next time. This is all a myth because each spin is independent. The odds are always the same, regardless of previous results, and the gambler’s fallacy can create a false sense of strategy where there isn’t any.
How Roulette Strategies Can Help Combat Psychological Biases
We discussed the psychological influences in roulette, and so many pose the question: Can a betting strategy help you avoid emotional betting? The short answer is yes, it can. However, it’s crucial to follow the strategy you have chosen and approach it as it is – a framework to keep your betting in place, not a guaranteed way to win.
Some of the benefits of using strategies in online roulette live include:
- You can maintain consistency
- They minimize the risk
- Are designed with long-term thinking in mind
- Create mental boundaries
Many believe that betting strategies are designed to guarantee you profit when playing roulette at online casinos. That’s not entirely true. The main purpose of following a set strategy, like the Labouchere, Fibonacci, or Martingale, is to approach the bets logically. Instead of having an emotional response to wins or losses, you have a clear path that you need to follow. You either increase the bet size, decrease it, or return to start.
There are strategies, like Oscar’s Grind and d’Alembert, that focus on minimizing the risk. Instead of chasing losses, they will help you maintain a low bet size, which, in turn, will keep your spending in check.
Conclusion
No matter how experienced you are, the psychological aspects of any roulette, be it online live roulette or any other variant, are very real. They can subconsciously influence your betting decisions, which is why it’s important to recognize these traps and react to them.
The best way to combat them is by integrating and following a roulette strategy, which can help you stay grounded and reduce impulsive bets.
