Signs of Gambling Addiction

How many people are gambling?

In March 2022, 43% of Brits gambled at least once. However, more males than females are gambling, with around 45% gambling in the last 4 weeks compared to 42% of females. Gambling participation reached its highest level in 2016, where 48% of all Brits said they gambled at least once.

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David's story

It all started with a big win at the races for David Smith who found himself addicted to gambling. He bravely told us about the impact it had on his life and how he managed to beat his addiction.

What Should I Do If I Think I May Be Experiencing Gambling Harm?

You can talk in confidence to a Safer Gambling Ambassador at any of our casinos. They understand the issues involved and have been specially trained to provide you with information and guidance. Alternatively, email us in confidence at safergambling@metropolitangaming.com providing your Met Card number and one of our Safer Gambling team will contact you.

Never be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help.

You can self-exclude from all of our UK casinos, or nationally from all casinos in the UK, by asking to join the casino industry’s national self-exclusion scheme, SENSE (Self-Enrolment National Self-Exclusion). For information and help on how to self-exclude, please see below.

You can also contact dedicated support groups who are available to assist you – see Additional Support section below.

Free-to-play social online games that simulate gambling are a hugely popular, and profitable, new phenomenon, but concerns have been raised about how innocent these games really are. Our recently published study found that for some vulnerable gamblers, social casino games can trigger a desire to gamble for real money, while for others the games can act as a useful distraction.

Social casino games are games that look, sound and play like gambling games, but they do not pay out real money and encourage players to connect with their online networks via social media. Worldwide, 173 million people were estimated monthly to play these games in 2012, and the number is growing at 24% per year.

The convergence of social media, gaming and gambling is very new and we do not understand what impact this is having on people and their health, as well as their wallets. Not only are people lying in bed at night playing imaginary slot machines, a fair few of them are paying for more “coins” to play. Social casino games are among the most profitable social games genre and are expected to generate US$4.4 billion by 2015.

Our research shows that there is some overlap between social casino gamers and gamblers. We found that approximately 13% of gamblers also played social casino games. These gamblers were more likely to be younger and gamble online, and were also more likely to have gambling problems.

Technology and industry are far outpacing regulators and these games have left policymakers worldwide scratching their heads. Anti-gambling Australian senator Nick Xenophon has tried several times to ban social casino games. In its 2012 review of the Interactive Gambling Act, the Department of Communications recognised that the games were of concern, but recommended that their impact be “closely monitored”.

For our study, ten social casino game players, six of whom are male, were recruited for in-depth interviews. Eight also used land-based gambling and four gambled online.

The Emergence of the First Gambling Establishments 

Historians don’t know the precise time when gambling began. However, they believe that members of every society have participated in gambling in one form or another. From Ancient Romans and Greeks to England and France, human history is full of entertaining stories with games of chance as their basis.

The first gambling establishment appeared in the 17th century in Italy. Although the Ridotto didn’t meet the modern casino’s definition, it provided a more controlled gambling atmosphere in Venice after opening its doors to gamblers in 1638. After the Ridotto, more gambling establishments emerged in the 19th century throughout Europe. But, unfortunately, the Great Council of Venice closed it in 1774 because the city government thought it impoverished the local gentry.

The Americans referred to their ancient gambling establishments as saloons. Cities like San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago greatly influenced the importance and creation of the saloons. Travelers found the people to drink with, talk to, and gamble within these saloons.

However, state legislation outlawed gambling in America at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1931, the state of Nevada decriminalized gambling. As a result, Nevada became home to the first legal American casinos. In Atlantic City, New Jersey legalized gambling, becoming the second-largest city in America where people could gamble freely.

In France, land-based casinos date back to 1550. In this year, King Francois Ier authorized the opening of the first terrestrial theater. While some archaeologists refer to France as the cradle of games of chance, the casino fashion wave reached this country in 1765. That’s when the country had the first casino open in Paris. Cardinal Mazarin made this possible, hoping to replenish the country’s treasury using taxes from the casino business. This casino introduced the roulette game that had not appeared in other establishments. And this made it very popular among players.

Other European countries opened the first casinos in the early 18th century due to large numbers of gamblers that loved participating in these entertainments. Also, these casinos offered reasonable prize amounts. The opportunities for earning decent money drew more players to these establishments. And that’s how land-based casinos’ popularity increased.

As of the 19th century, games like Vingt-et-un and roulette arrived in the United States with early French settlers. Steamboats became gambling venues on the Mississippi, where wealthy traders and farmers spent their leisure time. In 1829, gamblers were playing a poker version whose origin was Persia in the 17th century.

Gambling mechanization meant that humans could regulate winnings more accurately. Pitt and Sittman developed the first gambling machine in New York. At around that time, Charles Fey invented the Liberty Bell machine. The first video slot invention happened in 1976, paving the way for the current versions of video slots that gamblers play online.

Land-Based Casinos Today 

Since their introduction, land-based casinos have gone through several changes. They have also been through turbulent times during their history. But change is always inevitable in all industries, whether bad or good.

Over the years, land-based casinos have provided a pastime to many people worldwide. To some people, going to a land-based casino offers a chance to leave the house or the comfort zone and have some quality time in a social setting. Ideally, modern land-based casinos provide venues for people to meet and have fun.

Also, land-based casinos offer many rewards and promos in the form of free drinks for players. And this is a unique experience that many players want to enjoy more often. The buzz of dealers and conversational players, combined with slots ringing sounds in the background, characterize the land-based casino atmosphere. And this is something that most gamblers love enjoying more often.

Perhaps, the primary advantage of land-based casinos is providing a social setting. Here, a gambler can practice a unique technique against competitors, converse with other slot players, compete, and relax. The pleasant excursion that land-based casinos offer makes them relevant even when people can play online without leaving their homes or offices.

Today, gamblers have all types of land-based casinos that cater to their unique needs. Nevertheless, modern land-based casinos provide quite lively atmospheres. Flashing lights, smoke clouds above the tables, and loud music characterize some of these casinos. Perhaps, this is the thrill that makes these establishments feel alive in the digital age. Many people love dressing up to visit a local casino. That’s because their busy lives don’t give them the pleasure to do so more often.

At the gambling table, land-based casinos let players meet new faces and socialize. That’s because these casinos have actual dealers and real players at the tables. And gamblers experience this human element in all games.

Land-based casinos have undoubtedly made a mark in human history. And these establishments won’t go away anytime soon. That’s because brick-and-mortar casinos remain significant in some players’ minds. For example, a player that wants to enjoy a tactile experience with different casino games will always want to visit a land-based casino.

A casino-themed environment has something exceptional for some people. For instance, some gamblers love the company of others when gambling, while some enjoy flashy lights and loud noises inside a land-based casino.

Perhaps, what makes these establishments more appealing are their unique architectures and interiors. Additionally, most casinos have unique, individual themes that make them stand out. Even a person that gambles online will want to enjoy gambling in a land-based casino at least once. That’s because gambling in a brick-and-mortar casino is completely different from gambling in an online casino.

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Service Provider Interview Data

Results of the content analysis of the service provider data are set out in Figure 2 below. Verbatim responses are presented with the code “SP” and relevant findings are discussed in relation to the research questions.

FIGURE 2

Figure 2. Main themes from Service Provider interview data.

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Listen to them talk

Be mindful to listen to the person. If they aren’t ready to talk, ask them to at least think about their behaviour. You could offer them information about where they can get help – Priory has a free initial assessment with an experienced therapist for treatments including gambling.

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Help for problem gamblers

There's evidence that gambling can be successfully treated in the same way as other addictions. Cognitive behavioural therapy usually has the best results.

Treatment and support groups are available for people who want to stop gambling:

GamCare GamCare offers free information, support and counselling for problem gamblers in the UK.

It runs the National Gambling Helpline (0808 8020 133) and also offers face-to-face counselling.

The National Centre for Behavioural Addictions includes the National Problem Gambling Clinic (including the Young Persons' Problem Gambling Clinic) and the National Centre for Gaming Disorders.

If you live in England or Wales, are aged 16 or over and have complex problems related to gambling, you can refer yourself to the National Problem Gambling Clinic. See if you meet the criteria for this service.

If you live in England or Wales, are aged 13 or over and have complex problems related to gaming, you can refer yourself to the National Centre for Gaming Disorders.

NHS Northern Gambling Service provides specialist addiction therapy in the north of England, including the north Midlands. Find out about referrals and contacting the Northern Gambling Service.

Gordon Moody Association The Gordon Moody Association offers residential courses for men and women who have problems with gambling – email help@gordonmoody.org.uk or call 01384 241292 to find out more.

It also runs the Gambling Therapy website, which offers online support to problem gamblers and their friends and family.

Gamblers Anonymous UK Gamblers Anonymous UK runs local support groups that use the same 12-step approach to recovery from addiction as Alcoholics Anonymous. There are also GamAnon support groups for friends and family.

Apply to the Gambling Commission for a personal gambling licence or a gambling operating licence if you run or manage a gambling business.

The Gambling Commission regulates arcades, betting, bingo, casinos, gaming machine providers, gambling software providers, lottery operators, external lottery managers and remote gambling (online and by phone) that use British-based equipment.

Gambling Commission is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

Whiting estimates the number of successful advantage players to be in the hundreds. Cumulatively, they rake in large profits from games that were designed to be unbeatable: While some bettors might get lucky and win in the short run, over time they are supposed to lose and the casinos are expected to win, statistically speaking. In recent years, however, Whiting says the ranks of advantage players have swelled. Several factors are responsible. One is the ease with which gamblers can find each other online and share tactics. Grosjean has a blog called Beyond Numbers, for example. Another is the proliferation of books like Grosjean’s “Beyond Counting,” which he published in 2000 and updated in 2009 as a self-published edition (though he claims that if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t sell you a copy). And because regulated casino gambling now takes place in at least 40 states, casinos compete for customers in part by introducing new games, some of which turn out to be vulnerable.

Common advantage-play techniques include “hole carding,” in which sharp-eyed players profit from careless dealers who unwittingly reveal tiny portions of the cards; “shuffle tracking,” or memorizing strings of cards in order to predict when specific cards will be dealt after they are next shuffled; and counting systems that monitor already dealt cards in order to estimate the value of those that remain in the deck. Richard Munchkin, a professional gambler who is the author of “Gambling Wizards” and a co-host of the radio show “Gambling With an Edge,” claims to have mastered all of these techniques. “I think every game can be beaten,” he says. (Munchkin, whose real first name is Richard, chose his professional surname because of the fact that he stands slightly taller than five feet.) “For example, certain slot machines must pay off their jackpots once they have accumulated $30,000. At $28,000, a slot machine might be a play” — gambling argot for something that can be bet on advantageously — “and there are slot teams that specialize in this. I know people who clock roulette wheels and others who can control a single die at craps.”

Among the most susceptible games these days are blackjack and poker variations like Ultimate Texas Hold ’Em, in which play is against the house rather than other gamblers. Teams of advantage players — which usually require one person to bet and another to spot dealers’ hole cards (those turned down and not supposed to be seen), track shuffles or count cards — have become so prevalent that they often find themselves in the same casino, at the same time, targeting the same game. “We had a blackjack game in Atlantic City with a weak dealer,” recalls Bobby Sanchez, known as the Bullet, a frequent playing partner of Grosjean’s. “We had our key seats locked up when players from two other crews tried jumping into the game. Elbows were thrown and there was a lot of jostling around the table. An older civilian accidentally got in the middle of it. His son thought I had hit him, and the son jumped on my back.” Things ultimately calmed down and an agreement was reached via surreptitious cellphone conversations: Members from the other teams would be able to sit and play at the table and use information from Sanchez’s spotter, but their betting would be capped at $800 per hand. “Meanwhile I bet three hands of $3,000 each,” Sanchez says. “Unfortunately, the dealer got pulled out after about 90 minutes. Following all the tumult, the table was being watched and somebody figured out what was going on. Still, we managed to win around $100,000 that night.”

One Friday night I accompanied the slimly built Grosjean, who wore baggy jeans, a red polo shirt and a hat with its bill riding low, as he strolled across the carpeted mezzanine of the Potawatomi Indian tribe’s Grand Casino Hotel and Resort in Shawnee. As I walked beside him, I tried to appear casual, with the tail of my untucked shirt covering the notepad in the back pocket of my slacks.

Grosjean passed an escalator and headed down a back staircase. To experienced surveillance people, he is a known advantage player; at any time he could be spotted, matched to his picture in a database of such players and asked to leave a casino. If that happens, the security guard could also read him the trespass act, meaning Grosjean would risk arrest if he tried to return. Getting away, on the other hand, would give him an opportunity to come back on some future day and perhaps go unnoticed. So if security was waiting for him at the bottom, Grosjean needed to be able to run back up in the opposite direction with the hope of avoiding a confrontation. He couldn’t do that on an escalator.

Down below on the gaming floor, ringed by wall-mounted TV monitors silently showing a sporting event, slot machines chirped and crowded blackjack tables buzzed with action. Grosjean sidestepped a cocktail waitress and approached the casino’s only craps game, the one in which cards are used instead of dice.

Grosjean had explained earlier the reason for this quirk: The Grand happens to be located in a jurisdiction where it is illegal for dice to determine financial outcomes in games of chance. Two sets of six playing cards, numbered one through six, one set with red backs, the other with blue backs, serve as de facto dice. A player rolls a giant numbered cube, apparently made from plastic foam. The cube determines which cards are turned over. It is a way to make the game feel like craps without dice directly producing a monetary outcome.

Online casinos face a crackdown on exploiting gamblers’ superstitions, after the advertising regulator launched an investigation into one firm’s claims about certain games being “hot or cold”.

The Guardian understands the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is likely to uphold a complaint lodged seven months ago against PlayOJO, which advertised a feature last year that offered gamblers a “unique chance to see the games on winning streaks”.

“Switch between HOT or COLD to reveal the MOST and LEAST profitable games of the hour, updated every 5 minutes,” the website told players.

The online casino, which is licensed by the Gambling Commission and owned by the Malta-based company Skill On Net Limited, suggested they could either play “hot” games to see if they continued paying out or try to “change the luck” on games that were not.

Gambling firms in Great Britain to face tougher rules on preventing harm

Read more

The page on PlayOJO’s website that included the promotional material was not available at time of publication but could be found via cached versions. The feature was also promoted via a TV ad in which a tarot card reader gave a customer advice while secretly using the PlayOJO mobile phone app to inform her predictions.

Although the ASA has yet to make a final decision, a draft version of its recommendation seen by the Guardian indicates it will uphold a complaint that promoting the feature was “misleading” and “irresponsible”.

The ruling, if confirmed, will affect whether firms can exploit the “gambler’s fallacy”, the false notion that previous outcomes have any effect on what will happen next. An example of this is the mistaken belief that a roulette ball is more likely to land on a number because it has not done so for a while.

The ASA’s draft ruling warned that PlayOJO’s marketing did contain elements that suggested players could exert control over game outcomes, including the exhortation to “choose your destiny”.

Bookmakers have previously come under fire for advertising “hot” and “cold” numbers on fixed-odds betting terminals, the controversial digital roulette machines whose stakes were slashed from £100 to £2 after an outcry about their links to addiction.

However, the ASA’s draft ruling against PlayOJO is thought to be the first time a regulator has specifically targeted the feature, with potential implications for the wider gambling industry.

PlayOJO said it had not been requested to remove the page on its website offering the “hot” or “cold” feature and had not done so. However, it said it was “in the process of tweaking certain marketing materials” and had “therefore removed these pages from our site, to address specific concerns”, and would replace them soon. It added that the ASA may yet agree that the marketing did not breach the advertising code.

An ASA spokesperson said it did not comment on individual cases.

A spokesperson for the Betting & Gaming Council, a lobby group of which Skill On Net is a member, said it could not comment on individual cases.

This article was amended on 22 April 2022 to replace the main image. An earlier version illustrated the article with a game not available on PlayOJO.