Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Yes! You done everything but name the fallacy. Good job seeing that it applies to card games.
The Gambler's fallacy occurs when we decide that something happening more frequently than normal will later be balanced out by a period of that something happening less frequently than normal, or vice versa. If we flip a coin 10 times and get heads each time, we feel the odds are pretty good that we will get tails on the 11th time. In reality, the odds are still 50/50.
This is the counterpart to the hothand fallacy, in which we believe that a positive outcome experienced by a person can be used to predict future positive outcomes. So, if a person manages to get 21 at the blackjack table three times in a row, we say they are on a winning streak and will probably win the next hand as well.
In either case we are allowing negligible or irrelevant factors to distort our view of the odds. Since the human brain cannot perform complicated math on the spot it has had to find other ways to quickly calculate probabilities, known as heuristics. These fallacies are not just due to lack of knowledge about logic, they are directly tied to biases. The flip side of every heuristic is a bias. That's why, despite understanding the logical fallacy at the root of these situations, the wrong answer still feels right. We know that the coin still has a 50/50 chance on the 11th toss, but it still feels like it would be more likely to land tails after getting ten heads. That's the problem with biases. They often feel like truth.
