Gambling News

Gambling Makes The News

Last updated 11/02/2004  Second of three parts

International Symposium

Gamblers Fight Back To Even The Score
May 10, 2004
By RICK GREEN, Courant Staff Writer

William H. Poulos couldn't get enough of slot machines and video poker.

On a binge from the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the Florida man - a self-described professional gambler - followed the usual path for slots players: He lost. From Foxwoods to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City to gambling cruise ships out of West Palm Beach, Poulos left a trail of losing bets.

Poulos and a handful of other hard-core bettors are now out to even the score and bring the $70 billion U.S. gambling industry to its knees, forcing it to tell what they say is the truth about slot machines.


Inside The Machine

For 10 years, Poulos and his hardluck plaintiffs have pursued a class-action lawsuit charging that casinos, slots manufacturers and cruise ship operators - virtually the entire gambling industry - have fleeced machine patrons with a knockout cocktail of computer technology, crafty marketing and outright deception.

More Addicts In Treatment

The case is pending in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

"On most individual plays of the machine there is no chance that a jackpot can be won," say the plaintiffs, who are represented by David Boies, lawyer for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida. Behind it all is a broad industry conspiracy, Poulos charges, involving dozens of casinos and manufacturers.

The casinos and slots manufacturers, Poulos argues, are "engaged in a course of fraudulent and misleading acts and omissions to induce people to play their video poker and electronic slot machines based on a false belief concerning how those machines actually operate."

Faster Slots, More Addiction

The plaintiffs' argument mirrors what a small cadre of researchers say: Computerized, high-speed video slots hook gamblers by disguising astronomical odds. Games are designed to convince players that the next win is just around the corner, as close as the 7 or bunch of cherries that just missed the pay-line.

The Poulos case is part of a ripple of lawsuits beginning to confront the gambling industry, challenging the gaming business in the same way that tobacco litigation succeeded during the 1990s.

Previous lawsuits took aim at casinos that continued to serve known problem gamblers, even in cases where they signed up for voluntary "self-exclusion" programs. The target this time is more basic: the slot machine.

"It is the addiction delivery device," said Henry Lesieur, a leading gambling researcher in Rhode Island who treats slot machine addicts. "People don't want to have that discussion, though, because there is too much money involved."

BIG MONEY
Industry Funding Research

When he met with the industry chiefs who made up the board of the newly created American Gaming Association in 1996, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. had a haunting image in his mind: the infamous picture of tobacco company chairmen, hands raised, swearing in to testify before a congressional committee.

"I indicated to the board that I would not accept the position [as director] if they intended to make the same mistakes the tobacco industry had made," said Fahrenkopf, a former national chairman of the Republican Party and now the association's president and CEO.

"We know as an industry that there are certain people who can't gamble responsibly," he said. "We have a responsibility to step up to the plate and do something about it. We don't want people who have difficulty gambling."

In the last 10 years Fahrenkopf's group has funded the creation of the National Center for Responsible Gaming, which says it is committed to identifying "the risk factors for gambling disorders." The group has pumped millions of dollars into gambling research through a Harvard institute it underwrites.

Scott Harshbarger, former president of Common Cause, a citizens lobbying group, said the gambling industry is "so much better than tobacco" at public relations.

"They are open," he said. "They are willing to engage in debate. And there has been no serious organized public opposition."

Still, Harshbarger said, "it is always hard to accept independent research funded by the industry that is most affected by it. That's what got tobacco in trouble." As attorney general in Massachusetts, Harshbarger was one of the first to sue tobacco companies. He predicted that the combination of risk, lack of governmental oversight and the potential for large settlements will fuel more lawsuits against the gambling industry.

"Tobacco lawsuits started 20 years before they ended up being so successful," he said.

Recently, the gaming association released a "code of conduct" for gambling. It emphasizes training employees, voluntary exclusion of problem gamblers and advertising "responsibly." The group also sponsors an annual conference that brings together gambling executives and health researchers - all of whom invariably call for more research, not government regulation.

Late last year, Caesars Entertainment - which includes Caesars Palace, Bally's and the Hilton properties - said it would bar problem gamblers for life. Caesars, Hilton and Bally also are defendants in the Poulos case.

"We are not the tobacco industry. Eighty percent of people who walk into a casino go in with a budget and stick to a budget," said David Stewart, senior vice president for corporate communications with Caesars.

"We don't want customers that have a gambling problem," he said. "There are plenty of other ways for us to make money."

Others see a more basic self-preservation motive behind the industry's recent efforts to emphasize responsible gambling.

Casino and slot machine companies are "trying to bulletproof themselves from pending lawsuits. They are trying to demonstrate that they are doing the right thing," said Harold Wynne, a gambling researcher in Ontario and Alberta whose work has linked video lottery terminals with increased gambling addiction.

"Gambling moves in and out of favor with the public," Wynne said. "It may be in the not-too-distant future that it begins to move out of favor again. And that would scare the hell out of the industry."

If so, it appears things aren't headed in that direction anytime soon. There are now more than 750,000 slots and video lottery terminals in North America - with half a dozen states considering expanding or adding machine gambling. New York, Rhode Island and Maine recently added or expanded their video lottery terminal offerings in response to Connecticut's casinos.

Fahrenkopf said the proliferation of gambling - and in particular slot machines - during the last 20 years has had no effect on the number of pathological gamblers. "You have had this dramatic rise in gaming," he said. "But there has not been a concomitant rise in the prevalence rate."

Gambling researchers say it is more complicated than that. The percentage of diagnosed pathological gamblers may not have grown, but the number of people who are having financial and emotional problems caused bygambling has exploded.

"I don't think people who play a slot machine are being misled in any way. I don't think any jury will buy that," said Fahrenkopf. "The average players know that the odds are you are probably going to lose."

Knowing The Odds

Lawsuits against casinos and slots manufacturers say the odds are precisely what people don't understand.

"It is a case about whether slot machines and video poker machines fail to honestly represent to the players how the machines operate and what their chances of winning are," said David Barrett, one of William Poulos' lawyers. "The representation of the symbols on the reels bears no relation to the chance of winning."

The Poulos suit goes on to state that the "manufacturers, distributors, owners and operators know that the machines' popularity would be undermined if the public were aware of the true nature of electronic slot machines. They have made a concerted effort to perpetuate public misunderstanding and conceal the true facts concerning the operation of electronic slot machines from the typical player."

Poulos' suit targets the major casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, as well as slots makers such as International Game Technology and Bally. Indian casinos, because they are immune from lawsuits, are not named.

"The Poulos case, I think is the leading-edge case right now," said John Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois.

"One of the major issues that's coming up is, are the games in fact fair? Who is determining what is fair, with all these billions of dollars being lost?" said Kindt, an outspoken foe of the gambling industry. "I don't think the state regulators have a clue what is going on."

Thus far, U.S. courts have chosen not to lay any blame at the door of casinos or slot machine manufacturers.

"The only way to solve any problems that are out there may have to be through the courts. [State] legislatures can't say no to the money," said Terry Noffsinger, an Evansville, Ind., lawyer who said courts are only just beginning to understand gambling's effect on society.

David N. Williams, an Indiana man who lost $175,000 on a slots bender in the 1990s, sued Aztar casinos under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and lost. Noffsinger, Williams' lawyer, argued that the casino knew he was a compulsive gambler and enticed him with complimentary services and promotional offers.

"They make these people feel like they are important," Noffsinger said. "He would go home at night after he lost money and the next day he would run stop lights to get back there."

In another case, Stephen Small, a losing gambler and a Kansas City, Mo. lawyer, targets a casino and International Game Technology for "cheating the public."

"The machine does not in any table identify the odds of any particular winning result or overall odds of winning any prize," Small argues in his suit filed in state court in Missouri. "The defendants use deceptions to create the impression that large prizes are nearly missed by demonstrating reel positions close to but not achieving large prize wins."

In Quebec, a class-action lawsuit against the provincial lottery and the companies that supply it with video lottery terminals could go to court late this year. The lawsuit, filed by a lawyer who lost thousands on the machines, seeks $700 million (Canadian) in damages.

"It's the same as the harsh warning that goes on a cigarette package. The onus is on the manufacturer to warn you," said Sol Boxenbaum, a spokesman for the plaintiffs in the case. "They should have said there is a risk."

In general, though, gambling is seen as a personal choice, much as smoking or drinking once was viewed.

"From the industry's point of view, they want to put all the blame on the gambler. When are they going to take responsibility?" said Tracy Schrans, who has studied the behavior of video lottery terminal players in Nova Scotia for seven years.

"It is not just about the machines. It is about how the product is delivered," said Schrans. "Litigation is going to force them to deliver their product in a responsible way or get out of business."

Schrans said one in every four people who play regularly is going to run into trouble.

"These are not people who had problems with other things. It is specific to this form of gambling," she said. "Why is gambling different from any other product with well-documented risks?"

One reason, said Bo Bernhard, a sociologist at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies the gambling industry, is that society has yet to agree on how threatening gambling might be - and how much damage is acceptable.

"We haven't yet arrived at that consensus," he said. "We are still grappling with ... what is an appropriate level of harm."

"Are there going to be lawsuits? Yes, anytime you have that level of potential [financial] settlement," said Bernhard. He blames the lack of concern about machines' effect on people on the "MBA-ization" of casinos run by "people trained to maximize profit per square foot."

Still, the gambling industry has closely followed what has happened in Australia, where outcry over slot machines has led to strict controls, said Connie Jones, director of responsible gaming for International Game Technology, the world's leading slot machine maker.

"We care about our business. We want our customer to understand responsible gaming," said Jones, who believes the industry one day may be forced to label its machines more clearly.

"Really this is about the sustainability of our market. There is nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest," she said. "Tell the player how the machine works - this is randomness and this is how pay-out percentages work."

A Personal Decision

Lawyers for International Game Technology and casino companies, however, have aggressively and successfully fought attempts to force them to be more open about their machines, saying decisions about playing the slots fall on the individual. In a decade of wrangling in courts from Florida to Nevada to California, they have sought dismissal of the Poulos suit.

Playing a machine is "purely a function of individual belief, expectation and perception," industry lawyers argue in a court deposition. They further cite the fact that it is the responsibility of state regulators to make sure that games are fair. They also note there is no evidence of a nationwide conspiracy among casinos and slots manufacturers.

Industry lawyers responding to Williams' Indiana lawsuit make a similar argument. "Williams gave in to his internal urges," lawyers for Aztar casino say in court documents. "The harm was caused by Williams' unilateral decision and action to engage in lawful gaming activities."

Nelson Rose, a law professor at Whittier College in California and gambling law expert, sees little future in lawsuits modeled after tobacco litigation.

"First tobacco is legal unless the government makes it illegal. Gambling is the opposite," Rose said. "Gambling is illegal unless the government makes it legal. Where you have legal gambling the government has weighed all the costs and benefits and decided that this is OK."

"But," Rose added, "I think there is an interesting question about whether the new machines are getting so complicated and the payoff systems are so obscure that players don't know what they are doing."

Poulos, who did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, has described himself in court depositions as someone who was "fairly successful in most forms of wagering" - until he encountered slot machines and video poker machines.

"It really struck me once in the late '80s that something wasn't right about this," Poulos said in a deposition. "In 1990 I was sitting at a video poker machine. Twelve [losing] hands in a row I had ... I probably said to myself, `I should sue these bastards because they're cheating me.

-----------------------------------------------Slowing Down Gamblers
May 10, 2004
By RICK GREEN, Courant Staff Writer

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- When provincial leaders here discovered their video lottery terminals might be too addictive, they did something no government or casino in North America has ever done.

They made it harder for people to gamble away all their money.

The decision three years ago stemmed from a growing belief that problem gambling isn't only about the gambler. It's also about the machine.

"It's the same question as nature or nurture. It's a function of both," said Tony Schellinck, an economics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax and co-author of a long-running study of the impact of video lottery terminals, which are nearly identical to video slot machines. "The faster the machine, the more you are going to gamble."

"We could be headed down the road where we do everything possible [to limit problem gambling]. There's also a very strong lobby saying ... it is the responsibility of the individual," said Schellinck. "There's a real tussle going on."

To slow gamblers down, the government added clocks on the video screen and required the machines to display bets in cash amounts instead of credits. Pop-up reminders appear on terminal screens after 60, 90 and 120 minutes of play. After playing 150 minutes, a gambler must stop play on that machine.

Initial results are mixed: Statistics show that gamblers spend slightly less time on the machines - but they are pumping money in faster than before. Nova Scotia officials are undaunted, however, and insist that the changes are just the beginning of a long-term effort to assess whether electronic gambling machines can be made safe.

"It does make a difference for those people who want to try and help themselves," said Schellinck. "The people who want to keep track of the time have the clock. The people who want to track the money they are spending can now keep track."

There are plans for additional "responsible gaming features" to slow gambling, including the possibility of requiring players to sign up for a "players card" with a pre-set gambling limit, modeled after a similar program in Holland. Dutch regulators require an ID card to enter a casino, and patrons who gamble excessively are tracked for possible exclusion.

Meanwhile, other Canadian provinces have followed Nova Scotia's lead, adding their own "harm minimization" features in response to increasing signs that high-speed video lottery terminals create addicted gamblers faster.

In Nova Scotia, the "focus has been to provide a reality check and break in play to all players and to promote healthy play behaviors," said Beth MacGillivray, manager of responsible gaming for the Nova Scotia Gaming Corp., a government agency that oversees video lottery terminal gambling. "It's about better understanding who is playing our products. We need to focus better on who is playing."

"We want to be sure we are operating a business that assures it is sustainable," MacGillivray said. "We need to be integrating responsible gaming into everything we do."

Although Australia and Canada continue to make small changes in machines to try to slow down gambling speed, none of the slot machines or video lottery terminals in the United States have such features, gambling industry officials say.

Nova Scotia's research into its gamblers has found that the general population is highly vulnerable to VLT addiction, with as many as one-fourth of all regular players at risk of becoming problem gamblers. Canadian research also reinforced what seems an obvious conclusion about fast-paced video lottery terminals and slots: The longer a gambler plays, and the faster he or she gambles, the more likely that a problem will develop.

"Part of the problem is the belief that you can actually win," said Schellinck. It isn't just the gambler who is at fault, he added. "You have to actually blame the machines."

Schellinck says the gambling industry must accept smaller profits in return for keeping more problem gamblers at bay.

"Fine, we recognize that," said Julia Watt, a spokeswoman for the Nova Scotia Gaming Corp. "We are more than pleased to take a decline in revenue if it means fewer problem gamblers using our product."

In Nova Scotia, casual gamblers don't seem to mind the changes, lottery officials say. Serious gamblers say they are an annoyance.

In the smoky room set aside for machine gambling at Dooly's, a pool hall in downtown Halifax, Leigh Corporon, a dedicated video lottery terminal player and artist, laughed when asked about his government's efforts to make gambling safer. Nearby, a handful of players punch away at 15 machines.

"I've been gambling since I was 13. I gamble seven days a week," said Corporon, citing what he said were two broken marriages to prove it.

A clock on the screen "doesn't do anything" to slow down his betting, he said, and neither does showing wagers in cash value instead of credits.

"That's an absolute joke," Corporon said. "I can spend up to seven or eight hours if I'm winning, oh yeah, if I get a good streak going."
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First Of Three Parts

Long-Shot Slots
Modern-day slot machines have multiplied like ATMs into a $31.5 billion-a-year bonanza, but these blinking, blaring multimedia entertainment centers have a dark side: manipulation and addiction.

May 9, 2004
By RICK GREEN, Courant Staff Writer

Gene Babik pays $20 for a round-trip ticket and climbs aboard the slots bus at Union Station in Hartford, bound for another eight-hour session at Foxwoods Resort Casino.

Like most, he's got a system, one he works on as often as twice a week. This includes reading gambling publications, watching other players and using his own barometer: a small, battered plastic cup partially filled with quarters. If the cup starts to empty out and he can see the bottom, it's time to shift to another machine.

"I use this for a gauge. If I start breaking bills, I know I'm not going to have a lucky day," Babik, of East Hartford, said one recent Thursday afternoon. "I've been doing a lot of research."

Babik's strategy may be as good as any other out there when it comes to playing electronic gambling machines. Few people understand the odds behind these devices, which in Connecticut are guaranteed to take about 80 cents for every $10 bet. Today's slots, which provide 70 percent or more of a typical casino's revenue, are meticulously programmed computers, generating precise profits, along with a random array of "near-wins" and regular small payoffs that create an illusion of a sporting chance.

Yet, when it comes to the effects these high-tech devices have on people, Connecticut, with 13,000 of the most profitable slots in the entire world, has its eyes clamped shut. A study to examine the extent of problem gambling is years overdue. Meanwhile, a single machine can generate as much as $400 a day in revenue, and state regulators focus only on making sure Connecticut gets its 25 percent cut.

As the number of gambling machines multiplies - from slots to video lottery terminals to electronic bingo devices - to more than 750,000 in North America, so does the uneasiness. Fast-paced video slots are the most addictive form of gambling ever devised, studies show, raising fresh questions about the responsibility of casinos, manufacturers and the governments that regulate them.

Nowhere in the United States - not at Connecticut's mega-casinos, in Las Vegas or Atlantic City or on a Mississippi riverboat - will a player see the true odds of an individual play on a machine. Instead, patrons are told of a casino's overall "payout," an average of how much the casino returns on each dollar gambled on all its machines.

"The machine is telling us we can win and we are going to win big soon. That is the crux of the fraud," said Roger Horbay, a Canadian gambling researcher who also trains problem gambling counselors. "You are not going to win big soon. The player does not make a rational choice. They are being deceived. It is deceptive entertainment."

Documents on file in the U.S. Patent Office from a 1984 patent for modern computerized slot machines that use a random number generator make it plain that convincing gamblers they have a shot at winning is part of the business plan.

The documents state, in part: "It is important to make a machine that is perceived to present greater chances of payoff than it actually has."

It is the power of the machine over the individual that has led some researchers and governmental officials to call for new restrictions on video slot machines.

"You can make a bet every three seconds with these machines. It's over-stimulating," said Robert Breen, a clinical psychologist and director of the Rhode Island Gambling Treatment Program. "In terms of whether your mind can handle that, it's overwhelming.

"You don't even know if you've won or lost."

Predetermined Results

A few seats away from Babik, Mary Melvin sits quietly, enjoying the drive through the Connecticut countryside. "I start with the nickel games. I'll move up to the dollar games. I play the poker machines."

Melvin, of Hartford, fits the profile of a typical slots player: a woman in her 50s who finds the casino an entertaining diversion from middle age. She says she sticks to a budget of a couple of hundred dollars each trip. Like Babik, she also has a strategy.

"The end machines are the luckiest. The end machines are the best places to play," said Melvin, 57, who gambles on her day off. "I understand it, but it is kind of hard to explain."

It is hard to explain because few people have any idea how a modern, computer chip-driven slot machine works.

For starters, it has little to do with where a slot is located on the casino floor. The pictures on the reels have no relation to one's chances of winning.

Outcomes on slots are predetermined - from the number of wins to the number of "almost wins" that keep the gambler playing. The result is determined the moment the spin button is pressed, not when the video reels slow to a stop.

"There is a [computer] chip in each of the machines. Each time you punch the button or pull the handle, a random number is generated and that number determines whether you win or lose," said Richard Johnson, a Las Vegas-based electrical engineer who has studied slot machines and now heads a company marketing strategies to encourage responsible gambling.

The random number is "mapped to a win or a loss. They can control that exactly. ... They can map losses that look close. They can map that display to be whatever they want," he said. "It is a totally controlled environment."

The arrival of computer-driven slots in the 1980s handed manufacturers a huge opportunity: the chance to create even larger potential paydays and attract more gamblers for longer periods. No longer were the number of winning combinations restricted by the number of "stop" combinations on three old-fashioned mechanical reels.

"Virtual" reels were created, in which the machine or, increasingly, a video screen, simulates spinning wheels with thousands of potential combinations of symbols appearing. At the same time, the odds of three cherries or 7s coming up changed in astronomical proportions.

"The reels displayed on both [modern] mechanical slots and video slots do not represent, in any form, what the odds of winning actually are," Horbay, the Canadian researcher, and a colleague, Nigel Turner, wrote in a recent unpublished paper detailing how slot machines work. "The design of slot machines' reels encourages a false impression of one's chance of winning."

Machines are mapped to ensure "constant near-miss illusions," Horbay and Turner say. "It is virtually impossible for the consumer to figure out their chances of winning one of the larger prizes on one of these machines."

And that may be just the point, say casino and industry representatives, who argue that playing slots is entertainment, not a calculated business decision.

"Some of the players actually like the elusiveness [of winning], which is part of the game. That's what makes it exciting. It is the lens you view it through," said Connie Jones, director of responsible gaming for International Game Technology, the world's largest slot machine manufacturer. "Maybe part of the intrigue is part of the deception."

The random near win "could be programmed right out of there, if that's what the customer wants," she said. "Would that be fun?"

Counting Money, Not Problems

If most of the 40 or so people riding the bus with Babik are largely clueless about slots, the state of Connecticut isn't worried.

The state is three years overdue on producing a study mandated by law to measure the effects of gambling on Connecticut. State legislators, who receive $400 million annually to fund state programs from the slots, have declined to pay for new research into gambling's impact on the state.

The state's Division of Special Revenue, which oversees slot machines at the two Indian casinos, confines its work to making sure the slots meet legally required "payout" averages of between 80 percent and 100 percent - and that the state gets its 25 percent take.

"Our auditors go over every machine to make sure the state is getting every penny it deserves," said Paul Bernstein, spokesman for the Division of Special Revenue.

State inspectors, working with tribal representatives, make sure machines work according to factory specifications, down to checking computer chips and monitoring payout levels of the devices. Evaluating a machine's impact on the behavior of the gambler is not part of the job.

It should be, argues Marvin Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling.

"They need to be involved in examining concerns that come from research about the [slot machine] games," said Steinberg, a nationally recognized expert on treating problem gamblers.

Few people besides Steinberg and a handful of people at the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services track the growing connection between high-speed slot machines and addicted gamblers.

Christopher Armentano, director of problem gambling services for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said the new fast-paced machines are "absolutely" producing more problem and pathological gamblers, the same way a high-nicotine cigarette hooks a smoker.

Researchers say 1 percent to 2 percent of the population are pathological gamblers. The number doubles within 50 miles of a casino.

Experts say more people are reporting problems from gambling, although the number diagnosed as suffering from pathological gambling, a recognized impulse control disorder, has remained steady over the last 25 years. Some researchers have questioned this, however, because more stringent criteria are used now to assess whether a gambler has a problem than in the 1970s.

"Although it appears that the prevalence hasn't changed, that actually has more to do with how problem gambling has been measured both in the past and more recently," said Rachel Volberg, a research scientist in Northampton regarded as the leading expert on how widespread problem and pathological gambling is.

"You don't have the focus in the right place when you look at the general population," Volberg said. Rather, she said, some subgroups, such as older women and people who live near casinos, show increasing rates of problem gambling.

Armentano says it is obvious more people now have gambling problems, but nobody is counting them.

"One indication is the number of clients we see has risen so dramatically. Another indication is the number of women we see," Armentano said. "Virtually all of them are addicted to slot machines."

A Virulent Strain

Two elderly sisters from New Britain with big hair and makeup, who giggle and won't tell a reporter their last names, are sitting near the front of the bus, ready for another eight hours of casino adventure.

They're a wisecracking ad for Foxwoods.

Jean and Pauline take the slots bus a few times a month, spend a little money, enjoy the buffet, laugh a lot, then take the late bus home.

"We have a lot of fun. That's all that counts," said Pauline, wearing a comfy Foxwoods track suit. "I've won and I've lost. I understand them."

Recent research in Australia, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Rhode Island, however, suggests that slot machines and video lottery terminals pose a substantial threat to casual players like Jean and Pauline.

For the last three years, researchers at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence have been tracking what they say is an increasingly addictive relationship between high-speed video slot machines and gamblers in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Video slots are "the most virulent strain of gambling in the history of man," said Breen, the Rhode Island psychologist and co-author of two studies that found that the machines create problem gamblers four times faster than other forms of gambling.

"We measured the period of time between regular gambling and pathological gambling," Breen explained. "The machines addict people much quicker, about 13 months in between the time when they started gambling regularly and when they developed a pathological gambling disorder."

"What we've found over and over again is that people can enjoy different forms of gambling as part of their routine and leisure activities for many years. But when exposed to video slots the problems progress very rapidly," Breen said. "People transitioned from being non-problem gamblers to losing lots of money, having bad relationships, losing their jobs, their freedom and their good mental health."

Still, many veteran clinicians and counselors say the problem lies inside the head, not within a slot machine's microprocessor.

"People will lose more money faster and quicker, but I wouldn't say you are going to develop more compulsive gamblers," said Arnie Wexler, a former problem gambler who is now a consultant to casinos. "You are born with it."

Machines - high speed or slow - are beside the point, said another treatment expert.

"My patients go to the twilight zone when they are in front of the machine," said Rob Hunter, a clinical psychologist in Las Vegas, where the rate of pathological gambling is six times the national average. He maintains this is probably "biochemical rather than the personality."

"The illness is in the individual and not in the machine," said Hunter, author of a model treatment program for gambling addicts and founder of a gambling industry-funded clinic.

"If the machines were black and white and made no noise and you put them outside in the parking lot, my guys would still play them."

Man Vs. The Machine

But the machines do indeed drive gamblers' behavior, researchers are finding. It is the illusion of success - fast-paced games that offer intermittent and varying small rewards - that can encourage even a lucid player to behave idiotically.

"These are ordinary players, not satisfying any mental disorder criteria. It facilitated loss of control in ordinary players," said Mark Dickerson, a psychology professor at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. He has found that more than half of regular slots or "pokies" players lost control over their time and money while playing.

"You've got a normal mix of people, who lose control while they are engaged in it, making 13 to 15 purchasing decisions per minute," Dickerson said. "Why on earth would you expect anybody to continue to be rational and make informed decisions at that speed?"

A study of video machine players in Alberta released earlier this year found that three out of every five respondents interviewed had a significant degree of impaired control when playing.

Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, an ongoing study that screened 18,000 video lottery players in the 1990s found that about half of video lottery players were at some risk for problem gambling. One in four people in the study said they were spending too much time and money on gambling.

"Our studies prove this mode of gambling is characteristically different from all other modes of gambling." said John LaRocque, coordinator of problem gambling services in Nova Scotia's health department. "People become more addicted more quickly. They lose more money more quickly. They buy into false beliefs about winning. It is very scary stuff."

William Velardo, president and general manager at Mohegan Sun, said some people gamble too much because "they have beliefs in their minds that are erroneous - that they are due to win or that it is their lucky day."

"Are the machines the problem?" Velardo said. "I don't know."

On a recent afternoon, Babik and his companions pull into the bus station at Foxwoods, one of dozens of buses that arrive at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun every day of the year.

"Today I'm going to be more observant," he promised, holding his small coin cup.

A Foxwoods greeter steps aboard with a fist full of buffet voucher coupons, urging all to "have a good time and good luck." Babik pulls his belongings together, mindful of the "bad, bad day" on his last visit, two days earlier.

"It's sort of an escape," he said. "You can make big bucks on those $5 machines."

Coming Monday: Slots players fight back with tobacco-style lawsuits; and one province in Canada adds features so gamblers won't lose control

Gambling's Glossy Image

A DOUBLE STANDARD ON RESEARCH FUNDING

Published on October 29, 2003, Article 4 of 118 found.

Three of Connecticut's leading politicians have given a collective heave-ho to a plan to use federal grants to help establish an American Indian Policy Center at the University of Connecticut Law School.

 

Gov. John G. Rowland says the sought-after money from the Bureau of Indian Affairs ``would compromise the center's ability to conduct unbiased research.'' Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says the money ``would cast doubt on the objectivity and independence''

 

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STATE WILL GIVE BIA NOMINEE STIFF TEST

Published on October 22, 2003, Article 10 of 118 found.

David W. Anderson, an Ojibwa with a taste for barbecue and business success, faces a delicate political mission if he wins Senate approval to lead the embattled Bureau of Indian Affairs: Keep a lid on the controversy.

 

It won't come easy, because tiny Connecticut will quickly confront him with difficult questions on granting federal recognition to Indian tribes. In his first months on the job, Anderson will have to rule on the Schaghticokes, the Nipmucs and, perhaps, the Eastern Pequots,

 

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FORMER FBI AGENT ARRESTED

Published on October 10, 2003, Article 21 of 118 found.

A decorated former FBI agent was charged Thursday with setting up the 1981 murder of a top jai alai industry executive, a stunning development in a case investigators suspect arose from efforts by Boston gangsters to penetrate legalized gambling in the U.S.

 

Authorities arrested former Boston special agent H. Paul Rico, 78, at his home near Miami at about 7 a.m. Thursday. Rico's lawyer said he was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and with the murder of World Jai Alai owner Roger

 

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HORSE RACING ON TV DENIED

Published on October 9, 2003, Article 22 of 118 found.

A state hearing officer has denied a request by the state's OTB parlors to bring horse racing to home television, handing Attorney General Richard Blumenthal another victory in an ongoing campaign to block more legal gambling in Connecticut.

 

Paul D. Bernstein, a hearing officer with the Division of Special Revenue, which oversees gambling policy, has ruled against Autotote Enterprises Inc., finding that a TV channel that broadcasts racing and a telephone betting system would violate the

 

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CASINO WARNS UNDERAGE GAMBLERS

Published on September 30, 2003, Article 26 of 118 found.

Mohegan Sun, one of the country's busiest and most profitable casinos, said Monday it was launching an advertising campaign designed to scare some eager gamblers away from its slot machines and gaming tables.

 

Underage gamblers, that is.

 

With a new law going into effect Wednesday that ensures stiffer penalties for those under 21 who attempt to gamble and drink at Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort casinos, casino officials say they want to make sure everyone understands what the

 

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HUNTING FOR FOXWOODS

Published on August 26, 2003, Article 41 of 118 found.

Not content with at least temporarily blocking new Indian casinos in Connecticut, a statewide anti-gambling expansion group is now hunting bigger game -- Foxwoods Resort Casino and its development plans.

 

``We think this project is a great battleground,'' said Jeff Benedict, president of the Connecticut Alliance Against Casino Expansion and longtime nemesis of the Mashantucket Pequot Indian tribe, which owns Foxwoods. ``We feel we have taken the necessary steps to stop new casinos.

 

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ACROSS THE SOUND, A CASINO WAR

Published on August 10, 2003, Article 51 of 118 found.

Where success is defined by million-dollar beach houses, the natives now want their share.

 

A proposed Indian casino, smack in the opulent decadence that is the Hamptons, has this resort community in an uproar, pitting a tribe whose roots reach back centuries against contemporary settlers unaccustomed to independent-minded Indians. This summer, news of the Shinnecock Indians' bold plan to open a casino without state or federal approval has trumped even the usual seasonal tales of

 

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POOR MAY BE GAMBLING'S BIG LOSERS

Published on July 30, 2003, Article 63 of 118 found.

Behind the advertisements showing joyful, well-dressed casino gamblers or happy lottery players are legions of low-income losers, new statistics on problem gamblers suggest.

 

Nearly a third of all callers to a special telephone help line who identified themselves as problem gamblers said they earned less than $24,000 a year. Two out of three said they earned less than $45,000. On average, these problem gamblers said they had lost $23,237 over the last year, with an average lifetime loss of

 

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