their money adding to the casino’s profit. This false hope is underpinned by some particular beliefs.
•Luck allows people to win. While luck may be fickle, it is hope associated with possibility which allows people to override their normal logic.
Dr Phil Watts has been working as a psychologist since 1990 in both the public and private sectors. He has been involved in professional training and community education covering issues such as sexual abuse, giving evidence in court, psychological assessment, internet pornography addiction, and risk-taking behaviour. He teaches as an adjunct Associate Professor in clinical psychology at Canberra University and clinical master’s supervisor at Murdoch University. He currently runs his own practice, Mindstate Psychology, where he specialises in treating a range of issues including trauma, internet pornography, legal issues, shared care, and parenting arrangements. Phil is also an occasional guest lecturer on specialist subjects at the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, and Murdoch University in both the psychology and law departments. He has written five previous books as well as co-authored the highly successful Fit to Practice: Everything you wanted to know about starting your own psychology practice in Australia but were afraid to ask.
The croupier picks up a small object from the roulette table layout where it was sitting after the last winning number. This object is a plastic device called the dolly. When the dolly is on the table it marks where the payout bets are located. Bets have just been paid, so now the croupier says in a relatively loud voice “Place your bets”. The 7 or 8 people standing around the table hurriedly and systematically drop different coloured chips onto the green-coloured felt surface of the roulette table. There are a variety of positions covering different numbers. One chip on a single number is called a straight-up. There are various other positions for half and quarter bets on the inside of the table layout (splits, corners, columns etc.). The inside layout of the table has a complex array of numbers which makes sense if you study it over time.
Other people prefer to make what is called an outside bet — on the outside edge of the table layout. These are bets which are not based on an actual number, but on broad characteristics associated with numbers. That is, simple outcomes such as whether the ball will land on a red or black coloured number (half the numbers are red, half are black and a zero is green). Outside bets can also be whether the number is odd or even, or a low or high number (1 to 18 or 19 to 36) etc.
As people join the table they glance up at the LED-lit numbers of the last 15 spins, to determine whether the table is likely to be a winner. These might be a run of red numbers, or a run of numbers in a particular section, all of which shapes each person’s betting decision. A player will then drop $50 or $100 notes, which the croupier exchanges for either a plastic coloured chip (in roulette it is possible to have your own colour for that table) or casino chips of monetary value. The problem with the latter is that there may be a lot of people putting these chips on the table and arguments ensue as to whom the chips belong (interestingly, arguments are limited due to the security cameras filming the placement of bets).
The frantic pace slows as the players finish swapping money for chips and placing bets. The croupier flicks the small white ball in the groove of the roulette wheel. It spins around the rim of the wheel several times (if less than three spins it is called a no spin and therefore has to be done again). As the ball begins to slow the croupier waves their hands across the table saying, “No more bets” (the hand wave allows casino management to see when the last bet was called to prevent people betting after the winning number is known).
It’s possible for every number on the table to have some combination of chips on it. Therefore, all 36 numbers plus a zero are ALL considered by the players to be possible winning numbers. That means that if a player has bet on only one number, they have 36 chances of being wrong (on a single zero table)! Put another way, a single straight-up bet would have just one chance in 37 of winning (or less than 3 per cent). As you can probably see, the casino will make money because they only pay 35 to 1. That means that if a player bet on every number every time they would lose 2 bets.
There is a silence where time almost stands still as the small white ball begins to slow its cycles around the ball track, dropping across the various diffusers (“diamonds”) which can change its direction, before it lands on the pockets of the numbers and bounces to its final resting place. The wheel is of course designed to make the drop random and the ball may bounce or roll in different directions. It is not a smooth decent onto an obvious number, but a breath-holding process of bouncing either toward or away from the numbers upon which bets have been placed. The croupier guards the table without looking at the wheel to ensure that no one places a bet or removes a chip once the betting has closed. Most of the players track every movement of the ball, willing it to land in a particular place (although on one occasion I observed an older European man, who had placed $25 chips all over the layout, walk away from the table because he didn’t like to watch the ball land).
With a clunky sound the ball bounces across a few more pockets before it lands in its final resting place. The croupier looks at the wheel, announces the winning number (e.g. “26 black”) and immediately begins to clear away all bets except for those around the winning number — the inside of the layout, in the black, even, 18–36, or highest third section of the outside of the layout.
The croupier systematically pays out the winnings for those who were lucky enough to have a chip on the number 26, and to those who had chips on the outside of the bet (outsides are always paid first as they are more accessible to someone trying to cheat by adding an extra chip or two). Some of the crowd leaves before the payout as they know their numbers did not win.
To those who have bet on the number straight-up, the croupier pays 35 chips for every chip placed. The European man who walked away and who had 2 × $25 chips straight-up, returns to be paid $1,750. As a large stack of chips is pushed towards him, a novice player says, “Great win mate, you’re so lucky”. However, the European man (a regular gambler) responds “I’ve lost $5,000 today already”. He then places the larger part of his winnings back on the table ready for the next spin, with the hope that there will be another winning number.
From this scenario, to which I will return later, it is obvious that people put their money on numbers in a game of chance because they hope that they will win. At this point you could roll your eyes and say “We didn’t need a psychologist to tell us that”. However, the key to understanding gambling is that people are motivated by the adrenaline-charged experience of winning, coupled with a variety of other psychological experiences, and not simply from the desire for money.
The following simple example illustrates the point. Ask a gambler two questions, the first of which is “How did you go at the casino last night?” They will probably tell you “Had a fantastic night, had some great wins” at which point you think to yourself “going to the casino is all about winning money”. However, the second question reveals the telling aspect of the psychology of gambling, and that is “So, how much money did you walk away with?” Without exception, almost everybody will tell you that they have either lost all their money trying to win more, or they lost a fair part of it before they gave up for the night. Very few experienced gamblers ever report keeping all the winnings at the highest point — they always try to win a bit more.
I remember chatting to a man placing a bet one evening in the Melbourne Casino. In the process, I asked him about winning money. He told me that he had lost $35,000