We recently ran a series of articles on gambling systems, or more accurately, the inefficacy of gambling systems.

We hope you found it interesting, but we have come to realise that it represents part of a much bigger phenomenon in gaming, that of superstitions.

Gamers it seems are a superstitious lot, even otherwise-level-headed poker players; maybe it’s a necessary part of the psychology of playing – although believe us there’s nothing rational in it!

But, gamers will be gamers, and so in this short piece we’ll take a quick look at some of the reported superstitions when gambling, starting off with one specific country, China, before turning to some other gambling customs from around the world.

Finally we’ll briefly consider whether there is anything at all behind these superstitions.

Chinese Superstitions

The land of the dragon has a long tradition in gaming of course, and with Macau right on its doorstep (in fact, like Hong Kong, Macau has been under Chinese rule since the late ‘90s) not to mention large numbers of Chinese people playing in casinos worldwide, you may even encounter some of these face-to-face.

The list is actually much longer than what follows, but we have decided to confine the list to those superstitious practices which could be used online as well as in a walk-in casino:

• Feng Shui your room, including your desk and computer. Quite how this would apply to mobile gaming whilst on the hoof isn’t clear.
• Wear red (especially red underwear). We won’t be checking if anyone follows this up of course!
• Numerology: basically a more involved version of having a ‘lucky number’ (which we don’t recommend by the way). Interestingly, the number 4 is often avoided by Chinese and particularly Cantonese players, since it sounds very close to the word ‘die’ in Cantonese.
• Don’t wash your hands during a ‘winning streak’ and conversely, wash them during a ‘losing streak’.
• Saving perhaps the oddest till last, but players often abstain from sexual activity in the hours or days (or weeks or months depending on how much luck you are hoping for!) leading up to gambling, and women playing during their time of the month is regarded as ill-starred!

Others

Naturally number superstition is dominant here. Of course the number 7 is seen as lucky and indeed is a winning number in Craps, and conversely and even more famously the number 13 is considered unlucky, with many hotels in Las Vegas (and elsewhere for that matter) don’t even have a 13^th floor – the floors are numbered 12 to 14 consecutively!

In general, it’s common to hear people talk about a machine being ‘due’ for a payout if it hasn’t paid out in a while, or conversely, if it’s just paid out big, that renders it impossible to get a good payout in the near future.

This isn’t really true of course – whilst in the long run things even out, in other words it would be unusual to get 2 big payouts in a row, that’s in the long run…

…the odds are the same each and every individual time, and indeed we have seen as many as 6 ‘ties’ in a row on Baccarat – and the odds of a single tie happening are 10:1!

So in other words if an online progressive jackpot just paid out big, there is no less of a chance of it doing on immediately the next spin (though of course you would really need to wait for the jackpot to build up again – but the odds are the same).

Naturally there are many other superstitions which are held generally as well as pertaining simply to gaming, like carrying a four leaf clover, but even some of these vary from region to region…

For instance whereas in the UK and black cat crossing your path is regarded as good luck, in much of Europe it is regarded in completely the opposite way.

Of course, we do not really think that any of this alters what is in fact the result of random numbers generated by clever computer programmers, but if it makes your gaming experience more enjoyable, then well, why not!