Why a Near-Miss Makes You Want Another Spin

The reels stop one symbol short. It is a loss, and yet it makes the next spin more tempting. A 2009 brain-imaging study in Neuron found that these near-misses recruit the same circuitry that responds to real wins.

What the study found

Luke Clark and colleagues scanned volunteers while they played a simplified slot machine. Near-misses were rated as more unpleasant than ordinary losses, yet they increased the desire to keep playing, and win-related brain regions became active. The abstract is on PubMed.

Why the brain responds this way

In anything involving skill, almost succeeding is useful information. A shot that hits the rim means a small correction will do it. The brain carries that learning rule straight over to games of chance, where a near-miss on one spin says nothing at all about the next.

The rules are usually written down

A better habit than trusting the feeling that a win is close is to read how the game actually works: how many symbols trigger the free games, how multipliers build, whether there is a cap. Players sometimes log this in detail. One example, written in Traditional Chinese, is a hands-on record of how the free-game trigger and multipliers work in RSG's Thor's Hammer slot (雷神之鎚). Reading something like that shows what "one symbol away" does and does not mean under the rules.

Reminders that help

• A near-miss is a miss. It does not make the next round more likely to pay.
• If you notice yourself raising the stake because the last one was close, step away from the screen for a few minutes.
• Decide the amount and the time before starting, and stop when either is reached.