Playing the Machines [Documentary]

On Tuesday, March 24 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBC NEWS: THE LENS, the documentary Playing the Machines will be airing. According to the web site:

Playing the Machines features the stories of three people: "Trailer Park Boys" actor and VLT addict, John Dunsworth; Susan Piercey, from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, a young woman who started gambling at 18 and took her life; and the late Garnet Rhyno of Halifax, "a devoted husband and father who loved life" until he became addicted to VLT's.

Playing the Machines is shot in Las Vegas, South Carolina, Halifax and St. John's and includes commentary from several gaming experts and two people who have been fighting against video lottery terminals. Newfoundland lawyer Ches Crosbie is leading a class action lawsuit that includes Keith Piercey's case about his daughter's suicide; and Richard Gergel who won the fight to ban VLT's in South Carolina for good.

Online Version of Internet Gambling Report XI

The Internet Gambling Report -- Eleventh Edition (2008, October) is available online for the first time. The online edition costs substantially more than paper -- $US 595 for 12-month e-subscription vs. $US 195 for print -- but has the advantage of providing access to content from previous editions and continuing updates. For organizations where several people are accessing this content frequently, the online version might be a good option.

The site also offers a "standard subscription" for free which allows access to sample content from each chapter.

Game Integrity & Professional Sports Betting Markets [Newsletter Article]

With activities such as tanking, spying, referee bias, and match fixing threatening the integrity of individual sporting events... what's a sports league to do? To help shed light on this issue from a research perspective, University of Alberta Ph.D. student Brian Soebbing is analyzing sports wagering data in an attempt to detect efforts to undermine the integrity of individual matches.

Read the full interview with Soebbing in the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of Gambling Research Reveals newsletter.

Review of Oz Gambling Research [Report]

The land down under has produced a significant number of gambling reports and articles over the years. For a listing of newer research produced in Australia, take a look at the report "A Review of Australian Gambling Research" (2008, August) which was released today... well, technically yesterday if you're reading this in Australia.

The Madness of March [New Book]

Item #42 on the "50 sporting things you must do before you die" listing recommends taking in the NCAA's March madness basketball tournament. If attending the event live is out of the question this year, you might instead be interested in the recently published book from the University of Nebraska Press entitled "The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas" by Alan Jay Zaremba.

"Every spring, the first four days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament attracts a horde of basketball bettors to Las Vegas. From the tip-off of the tournament’s first game on Thursday morning to the final whistle on Sunday, throngs of bettors—overwhelmingly male—sit in smoky casinos obsessively watching as many as forty-eight college basketball games. This book immerses readers in that action. In The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas, Alan Jay Zaremba travels to The Strip and gives us a front-row view of the betting culture that surrounds the frenzied first weekend of the tournament."

Critical Literature Review of Risk Factors for Problematic Gambling [Article]

The March, 2009 issue of the Journal of Gambling studies contains a number of interesting articles... but unless you have a subscription to the journal, you won't be able to read them. The one exception is the "Open Access" article entitled "Risk Factors for Problematic Gambling: A Critical Literature Review" by Johansson et al.

According to Johansson and colleagues:

"The aim of the present study was to identify the existing empirical studies regarding the risk factors for the development and maintenance of pathological gambling. This is especially important for the implementation of prevention and treatment for PG." (p.88).

They note that:

"The critical review of 35 different factors or dimensions unfolded very few ‘‘well established risk factors for PG’’ (9 factors), where the conclusions could be supported by more than two studies. These were demographic variables (age, gender), cognitive distortions (erroneous perceptions, illusion of control), sensory characteristics, schedules of reinforcement, and comorbid states (OCD, drug abuse), and delinquency/illegal acts. Many categories (22) are considered to constitute probable risk factors (1–2 supporting studies)." (p.89).

If you're wondering about why Springer, the journal publisher, allowed only this particular article to be made available for free, you should read the web page How Springer Open Choice Works.