When you watch someone play a slot machine for twenty minutes and then walk away, you might rush and take over because it seems as if the one-armed bandit is ready to pay off after so many losses, but it isn’t. This is the gambler’s fallacy, assuming the odds change based on the history of the outcomes so far. Sure, over a long enough period of time the odds will return to normal, but in the short run there is no way to outsmart random chance.
