Can You Hack Luck? The Science Behind Winning Streaks

The thrill of landing a lucky streak is nothing short of awesome. 

If you’ve ever hit one payout after the next on a slot, experienced your team outperforming all odds on your sports bet, or watched your stack of chips grow with each poker hand you played, you know how incredible lucky streaks feel.

But what exactly is luck and what defines a lucky streak? In essence, luck is probability. It’s a game of chance. A lucky streak – or “hot streak” occurs when you win multiple times in a row. 

Are hot streaks truly random or is there a way to make it happen? Whether it’s betting on sports or playing slots at a casino website, luck is determined by a random outcome. Interestingly however, science has discovered that there’s more at play than simple randomness when hot streaks happen. 

The hot streak recipe: probability, psychology, and opportunity 

According to scientists, lucky streaks are a combination of probability, psychology, and opportunity. What this means is that while pure randomness is behind the wheel of the outcomes we experience, our perception can sometimes be a backseat driver.

How we feel about winning – while we’re winning – can influence our confidence, choices, and even effect our performance. The same can be said when we’re losing.

For instance, a study that analyzed sports bets made by 776 online gamblers in Europe and the US, found that the hot hand (lucky streak) is caused by gamblers believing the gambler’s fallacy. 

• Hot-hand fallacy is the belief that if you’ve been winning, you’re more likely to win again.
  
• Gambler’s fallacy is the belief that if you’ve been losing, you’re more likely to win in the future.

In a nutshell, what scientists learned was that sports bettors who hit winning streaks stayed lucky because the risky nature of their bets decreased. They adopted a more conservative approach and chose bets with better odds. Better odds result in a better chance of winning.

As for the losers, well, the more they lost, the higher the risks they’d take (bets with higher returns but worse odds). They hoped they’d win back their losses and more, but effectively only increased their losing streaks.

It’s apophenia, not luck strategy 

Winning streaks result from pure randomness.  Yet, humans have a natural tendency to fall victim to a phenomenon known as apophenia—we seek meaningful connections between unrelated things or find patterns in random data where none exists. 

For instance, the odds of a coin toss is always 50/50.  But, if you toss a coin five times and each time the result is tails, you might feel strongly that there is a greater than 50% chance the next toss will land on heads. Why? Your brain might think that more heads are “needed” to correct the deviation from the ratio generated by the first five tosses.

That’s an example of finding a pattern in randomness that doesn’t exist. The reality is that there is always a 50% chance the coin will land on heads and a 50% chance it will land on tails, each time it is tossed, regardless of the previous outcome.

In the end, scientifically speaking, although choosing safer odds might keep a lucky streak going, there’s no meaningful connection or pattern that results in a strategy that guarantees a hot streak.

So…can we hack luck?

Ultimately, no. 

While our perceptions can affect our choices, our confidence, and how we preform, we tend to find patterns where none really exist. 

Winning at the casino, sportsbook, or any other game of chance is controlled by random outcomes. Yes, making safer bets can boost the chances of winning, but wins – even when playing better odds – are never guaranteed.

Since none of us can “hack” or control pure luck, the best you can do is maximize your opportunity for good luck. 

To maximize your opportunity, stay positive, master your behavior, understand the rules and odds of the games you play, and – above all – play responsibly.