Psychology of Luck

Why Skill Feels Like It Matters in Games of Chance In some games, your decisions really do change the odds, so the instinct that skill matters is spot on. The trouble is telling those games apart from the ones where skill only seems to be working. Our team maps the…

Ten spins with nothing, then twenty, then thirty – at some point, it stops feeling like bad luck and starts feeling personal. That feeling is real. The conclusion it pushes you towards is wrong. To answer “are online slots rigged” properly, our team looked at the rules UK operators play…

That gut-wrenching feeling when you’re just one symbol short of a jackpot doesn’t hit like an ordinary loss. It lingers, needles at you, and before you know it, you’re back for another spin. What you just experienced is the near-miss effect that gambling relies on. We break down the neuroscience,…