Massachusetts leaders, meeting behind closed doors, don't want to discuss the costs. They don't want to discuss the crimes, lost families or the suicides.
While they continue to promote the Gambling Industry's propaganda that's been successfully market tested, few are asking about the facts and the costs.
Slot machines are designed to ADDICT.
The Gambling Industry only succeeds when it creates new gamblers and it's only profitable when it creates new GAMBLING ADDICTS.
That's the Business Model. It needs to be part of a transparent public discussion.
While other nations try gambling 'harm minimization,' U.S. casino slots players are largely on their own
U.S. courts say casinos have no 'duty of care' responsibility to halt compulsive gamblers from playing
Screens flash "Win!" even if the payoff is less than the wager. Near-misses fool players into thinking that they're on the verge of a jackpot, though the odds reset with each spin. A secret, carefully programmed ratio of reward and withholding sustains the suspense. And all the while, the machines track gamblers' behavior, to help tailor future enticements to return.
Advanced slot machines transform gambling industry and raise new addiction concerns
By John Mangels, The Plain Dealer
PITTSBURGH, Pa. -- It's Friday night at Rivers Casino, and people are crowding three and four deep around a row of Wizard of Oz slot machines, hoping for a turn to play.
The five refrigerator-size devices are awash in lights and sounds, like throbbing carnival booths. Each slot's video screens flare with rapid-fire images of Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the rest of the movie's characters. Their faces adorn the spinning betting reels, and their digitized voices urge gamblers on. "Show me your badge of courage!" the Cowardly Lion growls.
As the video reels whirl, the slot's Bose stereo speakers rumble with the ominous "OH-EE-OH" chants of the Wicked Witch's henchmen. When a spin produces a big win, the computer running this new "sensory immersion" gambling machine switches the music to dreamy "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and sends a shiver vibrating through the player's bucket seat, like a congratulatory massage.
The five middle-age women occupying those plush seats are transfixed, their eyes locked on the screens as they methodically tap the spin buttons every three or four seconds. No one's gotten up for at least 30 minutes. The crowd is growing anxious. "They're going to be cold by the time we get on," mutters a woman in a gold pantsuit.
Finally, one of the players rises to leave, but before any of the onlookers can react, her seatmate slides over and straddles the gap between their two machines, plying each slot with one hand.
A quantum leap beyond 'one-armed bandits'
Welcome to gambling's brave new world. When Cleveland's Horseshoe Casino opens early next year, it will be packed -- like its Pittsburgh counterpart and other casinos around the country -- with a new generation of computer-driven slots whose speed, sophistication, mesmerizing displays and deceptive odds have some gambling researchers and therapists deeply worried.
The advanced slots are ideal money-extracting machines, a quantum leap beyond the plodding mechanical "one-armed bandits" they replaced. Researchers say they tap vulnerable parts of gamblers' brains and can be a catalyst for out-of-control wagering, even in players who never previously showed problems.
The machines employ an arsenal of tactics to maximize what slots programmers call "time on device" and encourage "playing to extinction"-- gambling until all the money is gone.
Pulsing music, hypnotic graphics and near-continuous betting chances combine to lull gamblers into a trancelike state called the "zone" that some players say they actually prefer over winning. Prolonging their time in the game's sensory cocoon becomes the goal, which conveniently allows the machine to continue to collect cash.
Screens flash "Win!" even if the payoff is less than the wager. Near-misses fool players into thinking that they're on the verge of a jackpot, though the odds reset with each spin. A secret, carefully programmed ratio of reward and withholding sustains the suspense. And all the while, the machines track gamblers' behavior, to help tailor future enticements to return.
The advanced slots quickly have become the most popular, most pervasive, most profitable form of casino gambling. They're also the most likely to be associated with risky, excessive gambling behavior, like the Pittsburgh woman playing two slots at once.
While the operators of Ohio's new casinos regularly tout the jobs, taxes and other economic benefits the facilities will bring, there has been little public discussion of the problem and pathological gambling that also will occur.
Using a research-based analytical model, The Plain Dealer estimates that, at any given time, the four casinos will result in an additional 107,100 problem and pathological gamblers, 40,800 of them in the Cleveland area. The lifetime costs to society of those addicted Ohio gamblers, in bankruptcies, arrests and legal fees is at least $1.1 billion, and likely considerably more.
View full sizeSome researchers believe advanced slots have exacerbated the gambling addiction problem.
Whether the new machines can be called outright addictive -- the "crack cocaine of gambling," as the more extreme rhetoric goes -- is a matter of intense debate. Casino industry officials cite studies that show the gambling addiction rate has remained low, despite the meteoric expansion of slot machines.
But other research shows that the advanced slots are a magnet for pathological gamblers and that they can provoke bouts of risky gambling behavior in almost any regular player, causing them to lose track of time and spending.
"The contemporary slot machine has hit upon a very potent formula of gambling interaction," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology anthropologist Natasha Schull, who has studied the casino industry for 15 years and whose book about the slot machine gambling will be published in early 2012."They are geared to make you play longer, faster and more. And they solicit behaviors from everyone that look out of control."
One slot machine for every 288 Ohioans
Ohio voters authorized as many as 20,000 slot machines -- up to 5,000 per casino -- when they approved commercial gambling in 2009. The constitutional amendment, which the casinos' backers wrote, gave no rationale for the number, and there was no mention of its significance during the run-up to the vote.
Twenty thousand slots, coupled with as many as 20,000 more at the state's horse-racing tracks if the governor approves a "racino" plan, would vault Ohio to the fifth most slots-heavy state, ahead of casino-rich locations such as New Jersey and Mississippi. There would be one slot machine for every 288 Ohioans.
The large slots numbers in Ohio, as elsewhere, reflect a profound, technology-driven transformation of commercial gambling that began in the 1980s and is still underway.
A mechanical-reel slot machine.Old-style mechanical slots allowed gamblers to make only one bet at a time, on a single line of symbols that appeared in the "pay window" when the machine's reels stopped spinning.
The limited number of symbols -- cherries, oranges and so on -- that could fit on a mechanical reel meant that winning combinations came up fairly often. So the jackpots couldn't be large or the casino would lose money. Serious gamblers considered mechanical slots cheap and boring; they focused on table games like blackjack and poker, leaving slots to tourists and old ladies.
Slots began to employ microprocessors and other digital tools in the 1980s and '90s, and it changed the character of the machines and the gamblers they attracted -- a perfect storm of technology and desire.
The computer chips and video screens eliminate mechanical reels, and the limits on odds, betting and jackpots they had imposed. The new slots have "virtual reels" inside the computer and invisible to the gambler. They make an almost infinite number of outcomes possible.
Longer odds mean jackpot amounts could grow -- a bigger come-on for serious gamblers. The versatile video displays give gamblers a dizzying choice of winning symbol lineups to bet on, providing a feeling, albeit false, of control. And the digital machines are much faster. Avid gamblers can spin as many as 1,200 times an hour.
The most sophisticated slots have a personality of sorts. Programmers borrowed themes from popular TV shows and movies that resonated with the types of players casinos want to attract. With sound effects, video clips and touch screens, the slots have become truly interactive, using baby boomer favorites like Star Trek's Capt. Kirk and mobster Tony Soprano to coax gamblers to bet, and highlighting their wins with phaser fire or gyrating Bada Bing strippers.
Via plug-in "loyalty cards," the new slots also record megabytes of information about the gambling habits of their regular players. Casino owners use the data to identify the biggest potential losers and send inducements to keep them coming back.
The advanced slots don't come cheap; high-end models cost more than an entry-level Lexus sedan. But the successful ones pay for themselves in less than six months.
It's no surprise, then, that slots have eclipsed table games in terms of earning power and share of space on the casino floor. In Atlantic City, for example, slots produced less than half of the casinos' revenue in 1978 but accounted for more than two-thirds of it, or about $2.7 billion, in 2009.
The advanced slots' popularity and profit potential make them by far the primary form of gambling that casino customers encounter.
That will be especially evident in Ohio's four casinos, which are licensed to operate as many as 5,000 slots apiece. That's roughly twice the number of a typical Las Vegas casino.
The Cleveland casino won't install the maximum initially; the first phase in the old Higbee department store building will house 2,100 slots while the casino's operator assesses demand, said Rock Gaming spokeswoman Jennifer Kulczycki.
The Cleveland market could support a 6,000-slot casino, according to an Ohio Department of Taxation economic study in 2009, although that would create some inefficiency, with machines sitting idle at off-peak hours.
An "irresistible urge" to continue playing
The casino industry says that slot machines aren't addictive. As proof, its officials cite estimates of the prevalence of problem and pathological gambling in the general population, which has remained low and stable -- between 1 and 4 percent -- for 35 years, even as the number of slots has exploded.
If slots cause addiction, then more slots should have produced more gambling addicts, the industry's argument goes. Thus, "the problem is not in the products they [problem gamblers] abuse, but within the individuals," concluded the American Gaming Association's 2010 position paper on slots, which was written by a lawyer whose firm represents the casinos' trade group.
"It's pretty settled science that we are not addicted to things," said Judy Patterson, the gaming association's senior vice president and executive director. "There's no inherent addiction to a device, and there's no inherent addiction to one form of gambling over another. If slot machines had features that were addictive . . . then you would have seen a rise in pathological gambling commensurate with the number and the spread of machines. And that hasn't happened."
The industry's stance has an important legal nuance: If individual gamblers, and not the casino's machines, are to blame for addiction, then there's no basis for addicted gamblers to sue casinos and slots manufacturers.
But it may be premature to exonerate the machines.
Some researchers don't buy the premise that the overall problem/pathological gambling rate hasn't budged during slots' rise. The few prevalence studies that have been done are complex and can be interpreted in different ways, including that the rate has climbed somewhat.
And there are strong hints elsewhere that slots themselves are a significant factor in the addiction process. By focusing on regular gamblers rather than the broader public, researchers are starting to spot patterns of unusual behavior when machines are involved.
"You can say that 1 percent of the population is pathological gamblers, and that itself is a big number," said Kevin Harrigan, a gambling researcher at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. "But the truth is about 20 percent of everyone who has played one has run into problems. These are stunning numbers."
No one claims that slots are the single, direct cause of problem gambling. But the research shows that something about the machines affects players differently and more intensely than other forms of gambling.
On some days, almost 60 percent of the slots players in Nova Scotia, Canada's casinos were problem gamblers, a 1998 government-sponsored survey found.
In Australia -- second only to the United States in numbers of slots -- nearly half the bets placed on the machines came from problem gamblers, according to a 2010 national study. The same report found that 30 percent of all regular slots players were problem or "at-risk" gamblers and that slots accounted for more problem play than table games, horse racing and lotteries.
In another Australian study from 2001, nearly half of regular slots players surveyed said they typically felt an "irresistible urge" to continue playing. That loss of control is an inherent aspect of slots gambling, psychologist and gambling researcher Mark Dickerson concluded. "The typical regular player cannot be expected to gamble responsibly," he wrote.
And slots gamblers "bottomed out" far more rapidly than other types of gamblers, according to a 2002 study by psychologist Robert Breen, who directs Rhode Island Hospital's gambling treatment program.
Breen and others who treat gambling addicts had heard stories from many of their patients who claimed to have gambled for years or decades without problems -- until they took up slots. In research involving 180 pathological gamblers, Breen documented that the slots players went from regular to harmful gambling in barely a year, compared to downslides of three years or longer for gambling addicts who bet on lotteries, horseracing or the like.
In essence, slots deliver a more potent "dose" than other forms of gambling, Breen concluded. The rapidity of betting, the isolation, the stream of light and sound cues, and the deceptive odds of winning likely are what make the difference.
"Addiction is a relationship between the person and the object of that addiction," Breen said via email. "The features of the object are clearly important, as is the message, or lack of one, about any risks that are inherent in the object. I think, given the right circumstances, almost anyone could get hooked on slots."
Alex Blaszczynski, an Australian psychologist and prominent gambling researcher, testified in 2008 in support of Quebec, Canada's casino operator in a lawsuit filed by addicted slots gamblers. As an expert witness, Blaszczynski told the court that slots can't be said to cause pathological gambling, which is what the addicted gamblers claimed.
But "had they argued that [slots] contributed to pathological gambling, that would have been an entirely different matter. I would not have disputed that contention," Blaszczynski said in an interview. "It's an interaction between the individual and the machine. The machine provides the opportunity. It exposes the person to some degree of vulnerability to lose control."
Loto-Quebec paid to settle the suit in 2010.
Much more research is needed to figure out which specific slot machine features play a part in addiction, and whether they can be modified or eliminated without ruining the enjoyment many people get from gambling, and without stanching the cash flow on which governments have come to depend.
Some of that research is under way in countries such as Canada and Australia, where governments run the casinos and are more directly accountable for potential gambling harms. Even without definitive findings, those countries also are moving forward with slots restrictions, such as displaying on-screen warnings, slowing down game speeds and limiting bet sizes.
No such constraints are in place in the United States, where commercial casinos are privately owned. The bulk of U.S. gambling research funding comes from the casino industry, which, in the absence of large-scale federal support, stepped up to fill the void, donating more than $22 million to date.
Some critics say the casino money taints the research results, or at least helps dictate which issues are studied and which aren't.
Institute for Research on Gambling Disorders executive director Christine Reilly talks about whether slot machines are addictive.
Christine Reilly, executive director of the Institute for Research on Gambling Disorders, which manages the casino industry's research grants, said an independent advisory panel of scientists and reviewers ensures that the process is unbiased and the findings are scientifically sound.
"We're very grateful for the industry support, but our job is not to defend them," Reilly said. "Our job is to take their money and do the best we can with it."
The institute would be glad to support American research on the addictive potential of slot machine features, but "I haven't had any proposals," Reilly said. "I don't know why investigators are not interested in this, at least not in the United States."
Game of Trance: How casinos play you
•Advanced slot machines transform gambling industry and raise new addiction concerns
•Set time and money limits before visiting a casino
•Addiction researchers debate whether communities 'adapt' to the arrival of casino gambling
•Money set aside for Ohio gambling addiction treatment may or may not be adequate
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•Gambling addicts arise from mix of flawed thinking, brain chemistry and habitual behavior
•Odds of winning get longer as new wrinkles added to slot machines, although players may believe otherwise
•Psychiatric community decides to classify uncontrolled gamblers as addicts, which could change how society views them
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•Ohio faces obstacles, conflicts in regulating casino gambling
•Pennsylvania's gaming lab improves accountability of slot machines
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•While other nations try gambling 'harm minimization,' U.S. casino slots players are largely on their own
•Canadian province uses technology to watch for gamblers at risk
•U.S. courts say casinos have no 'duty of care' responsibility to halt compulsive gamblers from playing
Screens flash "Win!" even if the payoff is less than the wager. Near-misses fool players into thinking that they're on the verge of a jackpot, though the odds reset with each spin. A secret, carefully programmed ratio of reward and withholding sustains the suspense. And all the while, the machines track gamblers' behavior, to help tailor future enticements to return.
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