Blowing on dice
Blowing on dice before rolling "warms" them and brings luck.
Luck superstition
Gambling superstitions
Gambling superstitions: blow on the dice, never count money at the table, never wear green in a casino. First recorded: Antiquity; casino-specific rules from the 20th century. That makes it more than 1,500 years old — joint 2nd oldest of the 45 superstitions we have dated.
- Earliest record
- Antiquity see the history below
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
Antiquity; casino-specific rules from the 20th century
That makes it
more than 1,500 years old
Rank by age
Joint 2nd oldest of 45 dated here
Category
Luck
Gambling produces superstition faster than any other activity because it is pure randomness with immediate feedback — the exact laboratory conditions under which ritual forms.
Why it stuck. Skinner demonstrated this with pigeons in 1948: random rewards produce elaborate ritual behavior in animals with no capacity for belief at all.
1 of the dated superstitions here were written down earlier and 32 later, while 11 share its date.
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The versions people follow
What exactly is believed
Lucky seat and lucky number
Players return to the same seat or table and play the same numbers.
Crossing legs
Crossing your legs at the table crosses out your luck.
Counting money at the table
Counting your chips or cash while playing is said to end a winning streak.
How the bad luck is traditionally undone
A losing player may change seat, walk around the chair or leave the table for a moment to break the bad run.
Where it lives today
Casinos design around some of these beliefs — Macau and Las Vegas hotels skip unlucky numbers — and the belief that a streak must turn is the gambler's fallacy.
What people say
Blow on the dice, never count money at the table, never wear green in a casino.What is going on
Every game with a house edge is designed so that no ritual can affect the outcome. This is the one category where the futility is mathematically provable.Where it applies. Universal; Chinese gambling superstitions are the most elaborate and the most studied.
Other luck superstitions
Nearest in age
Gambling superstitions are joint 2nd oldest of the 45 dated superstitions here. Of those, 3 date from 1900 or later and 14 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →
Cite this page
AstroHot. “Gambling Superstitions: Origin, Meaning and When It Began.” Accessed October 28, 2026. https://astrohot.com/superstitions/gambling-superstitions/
For Wikipedia
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