When I first started gambling, I won some significant amount of money which further motivated me to continue gambling. Like any other gambler, later on I found myself losing more money than ever. Which is why I have always thought about whether beginner’s luck was real. To me, it didn’t make sense that the machine or the game knows if the player is a beginner so there’s no such thing as a beginner winning more than an experienced gambler.
But now that I thought about it, I realized that the beginner’s luck had more to do with the player itself than outside factors. As a beginner, you have no expectations. You do not know what’s possible. What can you win, what can you lose. There is no pressure of playing which is why you are just able to win. But a few rounds after that, you are already expecting to win. There is the need to perform better and get more money than the previous round. And that is the explanation for a beginner’s luck. It’s just our mindset.
If you think about this logically, there is huge incentive for casinos to run algorithms that will give new players more payouts than longer term players. Everything is interconnected these days, through a membership card (or facial recognition) and online accounts, that they may be able to change the behavior of their games if they wanted to draw a player in. They know a certain percentage of players will take the money and run, but the majority will stick around thinking that they have found a great new money making opportunity. They might get 50% win rates for the first 50 spins or 30 minutes of player, then it reverts back to a 95% RTP default but they it takes them a little while to realize they stopped winning so much, or they never realize and pay a lot more in.