Approaching the Hot Hand with a Cool Head

A Comment on Xu and Harvey (Cognition, 2014)

Abstract

In their influential paper Xu and Harvey (2014) claim that gamblers are more likely to win in subsequent games if they are in a winning streak and more likely to lose if they experience a losing streak. They suggest that gamblers create their own hot hand by falling for the gambler’s fallacy. In this article we present both theoretical and empirical results that challenge these findings and provide evidence that the presented results can occur without the existence of the hot hand.