Vol. 5 No. 12 (2026): Approaching the Hot Hand with a Cool Head. A Comment on Xu and Harvey (Cognition, 2014)

Xu and Harvey (2014) argue that gamblers are more likely to win after winning streaks and more
likely to lose after losing streaks. They interpret this pattern as evidence that gamblers create
their own hot hand by responding to recent outcomes in a manner consistent with the gambler’s
fallacy: after wins, they choose bets with higher winning probabilities, and after losses, they
choose bets with lower winning probabilities. This comment provides conceptual and empirical
evidence that the same aggregate patterns can arise without such streak-dependent behavioral
adjustment. Using 916,640 bets placed by 10,963 gamblers on the SatoshiDice platform, we
show that aggregate streak-conditioned winning probabilities resemble those reported by Xu and
Harvey (2014). However, individual-level analyses do not support the proposed mechanism. After
accounting for persistent heterogeneity in betting choices, winning streaks are not followed by
systematic shifts toward bets with higher winning probabilities. Our results suggest that aggregate
streak-conditioned statistics are insufficient to identify hot-hand-type behavioral adjustment in
gambling.