Las Vegas and Atlantic City used to be hot spots for gambling. These days, the Internet offers more gambling options than ever before with possibilities ranging from purchasing lottery tickets and playing the slots to placing bets through poker or roulette.
Casinos have been accused of using such tactics as offering free drinks, pumping oxygen into gaming areas and shining bright lights to lure people into gambling for longer periods of time. A new study examined how providers of online gambling sites bait potential bettors with practice bets and how “free play” impacts real risk-taking behavior.
Tahnee Frahn, a student at the University of Adelaide, Australia, led the study, which examined how 128 young adults aged 18 to 24 responded to real-life gambling scenarios after having participated in practice sessions.
According to this article from Science Daily, prior studies reveal that free-play showcases unusually high returns, leading players to assume that real play will produce similar results. Players are even coaxed through pop-up boxes to continue playing. Frahn’s study scrutinized the impact that these tactics had on players when gambling for real money.
Individuals in the test groups both significantly out-bet those in the control group, signifying that free-play increased gambling risk in practice and real games because it gave participants the false hope that returns would be similar in a money-betting environment.
Frahn says that online gambling has increased from 30 available sites in 1994 to over 2,200 sites per the latest 2009 figures. She calls the offers for free-play and practice sessions “dubious,” citing that online gaming sites have one goal in mind with such strategies – to pad their own pockets by swindling unsuspecting people out of their money.
