The Psychology of Losing

Posted on Sat 4th Aug, 2018 @ 6:05pm by Elizabeth Anderson M.D. & Eddie Hunt

1,187 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Oblivion
Location: Hunt's Fortune, Tivoli Gardens
Timeline: MD 13, 2230

The casino opening was apparently a huge success, if numbers of people crushing against each other was any indication. Elizabeth wandered from game to game, tokens in the bag hanging from her wrist. She'd bought a few to have the experience, and to blend in, but wasn't interested in expending her resources here. Occasionally, she'd hear the shriek of a winner somewhere in the room, but it was never close enough for her to know what they'd won.

Finally, she paused at a bank of electronic machines, several banks of them, actually. They looked very old, perhaps antiques, or manufactured to look like antiques. Moving toward one where someone sat in a chair in front of a machine, Anderson tried to watch surreptitiously to see what the point of it was. Confused at little pictures of fruit that went round and round when a button was pushed, she moved on to another and then another. She realized that the people engaged in the activity were so focused they didn't even notice her, so she openly watched several and finally figured out the object of the game - to get three of a kind to line up - but not why anyone would sit and play it for a long period of time.

She was querying the database when she saw the owner at the end of a row and walked over to meet him. "Explain to me, please, why this game is fun to those playing it," she said gesturing to the man she'd recently stood behind.

Eddie smiled at Elizabeth, before slightly straightening his bow tie. "The mistake you're making here is that because I'm the owner, I know why people play some of these games. It's one of the few things in the casino I don't really see the fun of. You just sit there and put money in and rely on a machine to win money for you. At least with some of the card games we have here, you can make your own kind of luck," he smiled. "But of course, what I can tell you about is slightly more interesting."

"So there have been many studies into why people find slot machines fun, I believe it was a psychiatrist or something. Take the woman down there on the left." He nodded to show the direction he meant. "She is transfixed with that machine, just putting tokens in, rarely winning, but still going. Almost as if she is in a meditative state, or a trance you may say.

"Now this psychiatrist, who I believe played on the slots a lot, said that everything about the machine draws the player in. The timing of the spins for example, they go around about 15 times a minute when the player is in that trance, which coincides with the rhythmic breathing of meditation. Even the spins force the eyes to go up and down, and the eye movement mimics a number of things that are important to us, like submission and hypnotic obedience. And then even when you get to the bonus bit, it forces you to look up, which is a reminder of the building you are in. Of course, there is a lot more about it, and even about the techniques casinos use to keep people in. If you're interested, I might have some of the books still if you wanted to read them?"

"Actually, I think I might," Elizabeth replied, interested in his explanation. She could access all of this in the database, and would, but humans didn't function like that, so she would borrow the books and read them. She needed to find a happy medium between using the advantages she had and using the few that humans had. "If I'm going to help people who want to sit at machines like this all day, I need to understand the attraction of it. Do you make money off these, or reward people often enough that you only break even?"

"I will drop them off to you tomorrow, I might add a few more which might interest you," Eddie smiled, this woman was really taking a keen interest. It was quite strange how interested, even with her job, but he shrugged it off.

"There's the question. So, like every game in this casino, the casino always has the edge over the player. The odds are always stacked against the player. Let's take the example of roulette. I've got European and American style wheels here, so European has 37 numbers and American 38 numbers. Bet on a single number and the odds should be 37 to 1 or 38 to 1. Yet they're 35 to 1. Even if you win, the casino wins. But people think when the table sees a lot of winners, it is a 'hot' table, and with no one winning it is a 'cold' table. However, that's a load of nonsense. If you bet on a number, let's say number 17, you have a one in 37 chance of it coming out. If it comes out, and you bet again on the same number, you still have a one in 37 chance of it coming out. And so on and so on. Most people see the chances of a number coming out twice in a row long odds, but in actual fact, it's exactly the same odds."

Elizabeth would definitely have to consult the database to see the math on that, but it made a crazy kind of sense, even without that. She set a subroutine to experimenting with the concept, but the nano seconds that took didn't cause any lack of attention to what Mr. Hunt was saying.

"In relation to the slots, it's based on a random number generator. It's entirely random. So someone can sit there through 100 spins and win pennies every 5 spins or so, and because they've won they keep putting the money back in. Although the money they win is less than they started with, the feeling of winning is too much for a lot of people, and they just keep going. It takes a real gambler to know when to stop and walk out of the casino," Eddie explained. "I hope that wasn't too much for you to take in. I mean, there was a reason I took the casino over right?"

"No, no, not too much, but I do have one question," she replied. "What are pennies?"

Eddie threw Elizabeth a glance, "Out of all that, that's what you pick out," He smiled at her, what an extraordinary woman. "Sorry, it's more of a term that I use. Pennies is some form of currency somewhere, but generally isn't much. So when I say they have won pennies, then I mean they win very little," Eddie explained.

"Ah, now everything falls into place. Just one word will often do that," Anderson smiled. "They keep going because winning a small amount now and then keeps up their hopes that the big win is just around the corner. It's unlikely to happen, but in the meantime you keep winning anyway." She thought about all he had said. "I should write a book. The Psychology of Losing."

 

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