What Hot Hands Mean: Explained
The art and act of gambling are practically as old as the hills and practised by nearly every human civilization. Gambling serves as a means of tempting the fates into coming to our aid and have let bettors from the dawn of time access fortunes they might otherwise not be able to. Gambling has boomed in the last few decades, thanks to the internet revolution that lets anyone gamble anytime anywhere with just a few clicks on their smartphones and computing devices.
Given that gambling is one of the oldest activities known to man, it’s reasonable to imagine that there are lots of beliefs and notions associated with it, as well as a shipload of superstitions. Exploring gambling superstitions is not within the purview of this article. However, taking a deep look at the apparent gambling phenomenon known as Hot Hands is.
Hot hands are based in part on the widely held belief in “hot streaks”, whereby gamblers can tap into and immensely benefit from a massive run of the most fortuitous good luck. However, the notion of Hot Hands is just that, one without any supporting fact. In fact, gamblers cannot win or lose based on previous winning or losing results, as everything is totally random.
Hot Hands- A Detailed Overview
To explain it better, an example using the roulette wheel will be employed. Now, supposing the ball on the spinning roulette wheel ends up on a red pocket around 15 times in a row, the probability that it will actually end up in the red pocket yet again remains identical to the probability that it will land in the other pockets. In effect, the results of past and future spins have no influence whatever on the present and future spins.
This term is widespread due to some reasons. Chief among which is that significant run of lucks are remarkable and more easily remembered. People, therefore, believe in this after apparently witnessing it, though whatever might have happened was actually statistically possible.
It is also possible for Hot Hands to be seemingly apparent to sports, thereby helping convince people that the fallacy is actually true. In actual fact, the form of players along with their skill plays a large role in winning or losing, with players having a string of wins or loses held up as having Hot Hands.
This principle also applies to such games of skill like poker. Here, bold, confident and better-skilled players who are better able to manage their emotions and can focus can play rather well and win big for some time. This does not, however, mean that all the better cards are being given to them or that their luck is much better on flops.
In an addendum to the Roulette example stated above, the fact that the ball did land in the red pocket 15 consecutive times might point to evidence of mischief or fraudulent interference. It is, however, possible for this not to be the case and for the wheel to be as fair as can be.