Monte Carlo

On August 18, 1913, in the Monte Carlo Casino, something incredible happened.

At one of the roulette tables, the ball fell in black 26 times in a row.

That impossible streak of black destroyed many gamblers that day. The odds of hitting black 26 times in a row are a staggering 1 in 66.6 million. As the gamblers at the table continued to see black hit, they bet on the odds that a red streak would follow. It never did. So they kept losing money.

This event is the most famous example of the Gambler’s Fallacy. The Gambler’s Fallacy is the incorrect assumption that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past it is less likely to happen in the future (or vice versa). The ball lands in black 26 times, it has to land on red for a streak next, right? Wrong.

Humans look for patterns, streaks, signals and cues to help them make decisions. But here’s the thing, we are shit at recognising our own bias in relation to the streaks or patterns we see.

Do you remember taking your final year multiple-choice exams? Do you remember thinking to yourself: The last four answers were “A”, I know it. The next answer cannot be “A”. It can’t be. They’d never create a test that way. Never! So you chose “B” even though you kinda knew it was “A”. That’s the Gambler’s Fallacy at work. People believe that a short sequence of random events should be representative of longer ones when in fact this is not true.

Tossing a coin and seeing heads land 10 times in a row does not show that the next toss is more likely to be tails. It’s still a 50/50 shot that it’ll be either.

This fallacy exists everywhere. The more you think about it, the more you’ll realise how little control you have over your decisions. You’re gambling every day with every decision all the time and you don’t even know it. Your brain is hunting for patterns, sequences, cues and signals. We're hunting without even knowing it. These perceived patterns are screwing with your ability to make good decisions.

Life is not balanced. It is not fair. It is not sensible. It’s random but humans hate that. Humans hate to admit that life is random. We despise the idea that we have no ability to predict what is going to happen next. No real ability to give ourselves even the slightest of advantages.

Gambling is not fair but gamblers have a false belief that it is or they wouldn’t gamble. Chance itself is not fair or just or balanced. It’s chance. But we want it to be a fair process that balances out in the event of streaks. Life is the same. It’s not predictable, it’s not fair, it’s all over the place, random, fun, exciting, strange and intense. It can’t be any other way.

Pattern recognition is an important tool in your arsenal but it’s only one tool. You need more than patterns to make decisions or you’re gambling with your future.

Start looking for facts. Look for the cold hard truth about your situation. Look for the things you can control, not the probabilities of the things that may or may not arrive. It’s comforting to think that what worked for us in the past will work for us in the future but it’s naive. The world is different today, you are different today. Millions of variables are different today and need to be considered

Your life is more than a series of streaks, patterns and events that repeat themselves to give you an edge.