How games of chance reflect and influence the world around us.
Often, gamblers decide to pool their resources and share both the costs and the gains from their gambling. Lottery clubs are the best example of this. Sometimes, though, it ends badly, as in this Connecticut case. From the Boston Globe: For years, Theresa Sokaitis and Rose Bakaysa were the closest of siblings, whiling away long […]
Family feud over jackpot Read More »
gambling & culture, news about gambling…is working the casino circuit, and at Caesars Palace, no less: President Bill Clinton will speak at The Colosseum @CaesarsPalace on Mon., Feb. 22 at 7:30pm. Tickets go on sale Monday! via The Colosseum ColosseumatCP on Twitter. Why do I say “another?” About a year and a half ago, Mikhail Gorbachev played the Seminole Hard
Another former head of state… Read More »
gambling & culture, news about gamblingGood news: we are able to offer the research felllowship program for the 2010-11 academic year. Here is the job announcement: The Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas http://gaming.unlv.edu invites graduate students and academic faculty to apply for month-long residency fellowships. Fellows will spend one month doing research at UNLV
2010-11 gaming fellowships Read More »
gambling & culture, what's newBack in the summer I interviewed Dylan Evans for the UNLV Gaming Podcast. His main area of current research is risk intelligence. He’s set up a website where you can test your own risk intelligence. Here are the details: Risk Intelligence Quotient RQ is a measure of a person’s ability to estimate probabilities accurately. People
Test your risk intelligence Read More »
gambling & cultureI don’t have much time to write today, but I wanted to get this thought out there. I haven’t seen the new James Cameron movie Avatar yet, but from the commercials and the reviews, I think that it might be the best cinematic comparison to City Center. It’s worth noting that they’ve been “in production”
Ariavatar and Cirque du Spring Read More »
gambling & culture, news about gamblingSide discussion to the Vdara opening: I heard one PR person reference it as “the Vdara,” and it sounded wrong. It’s funny how some casinos need the definite article in front of them, others don’t, and others sound OK either way. I know there’s a debate about “the Wynn/Wynn,” but you’d pretty much never say,
The definite article? Read More »
gambling & cultureWith all of the problems the Large Hadron Collider has had, a pair of physicists are mulling the possibility that nature itself is conspiring against it. It’s possible, they say, that the potential creation of a Higgs boson particle is so abhorrent that “ripples through time” are preventing the machine from operating as it’s supposed
Playing Casino War with the universe Read More »
gambling & cultureJim McManus has an interesting article on the American-ness of poker in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education: American DNA is a notoriously complex recipe for creating a body politic, but two strands in particular have always stood out in high contrast: the risk-averse Puritan work ethic and the entrepreneur's urge to seize the main
This isn’t part of the Gaming Research Colloquium Series but may be of interest to those interested in gambling nonetheless. Next month, anthropologist Barbara Oakley will give a talk called “Bad to the Bone: Can Our Genes Make Us Act Badly?” I’m not going to let my knee-jerk anti-biological determinist reaction keep me from a
Interesting anthro lecture Read More »
gambling & cultureA columnist in the St. Augustine Record has a prescription for women who are dreading the return of football season: gambling! You can bridge this gap with one of the greatest relationship problem solvers I know: gambling. Thats right. A few interesting wagers can easily return your family from football fan and widow to weekend
Gambling can save your marriage! Read More »
gambling & cultureProblem gambling is classified as an impulse control disorder, and it looks like it may have company. An Iowa State study says that many children suffer from addictive video gaming. From USA Today: Nearly one in 10 children and teens who play video games show behavioral signs that may indicate addiction, a new study reports.
Kids addicted to gaming Read More »
gambling & cultureCops in Royal Oak, Michigan, have gotten their digs renovated–thanks to bookies. From the Chicago Tribune: The second floor of the citys police station has a new look thanks to money seized a decade ago from a sports gambling operation. The department put up almost $34,000 for the $52,000 renovation completed Wednesday, most of it
Extreme Makeover: Sports Betting Edition Read More »
gambling & cultureThe fifth episode of the UNLV Gaming Research podcast series is up, and it’s a great one: Jacob Avery, our February 2009 Research Fellow, talks about his sociological research into poker, which started in an Atlantic City card room and has taken him to UNLV Special Collections’ Reading Room. Avery, a graduate student in sociology
New poker podcast up Read More »
gambling & culture, what's newAbout three years of Poker Player Newspaper are now online. There isn’t much indexing, but there are contents for some of the issues. It’s a great resource for poker history. Poker Player Newspaper :: Back Issues.
Poker Player archive Read More »
gambling & cultureThis Christian Science Monitor editorial argues with some logic that gambling isn’t the best thing for the economy. But I think the last line is a bit utopian: One bright spot in this deep recession is that gamblers might be saying "Enough" to the lure of easy money and calling it quits. States, too, should
If you’re familiar with your gambling history (some of which you can find, in a single volume and at an outrageously affordable price, in Roll the Bones) you already know that, going back to the Romans, gambling was permitted, even encouraged, during the Saturnalia festival at the end of the year. Saturnalia evolved into Christmas,
Merry Christmas, start gambling! Read More »
gambling & cultureAre “tough economic times” making us less willing to risk? And is that a bad thing? The LV Sun looks at it: Risk and risk-takers have been celebrated, fetishized, apotheosized in the American economy and culture for two decades. George Gilder, bard of ’80s-era supply side economics, summed it up: “A successful economy depends on
That headline will be funny to a very small number of people privy to a private joke of someone else’s making, but trust me, it’s kind of funny. So is the story, from Dvice: Life in Japan really is a sweet little slice of science fiction. Currently, Japanese televisions and giant video billboards are running
Darth Vader is real Read More »
gambling & cultureCan people control their behavior? Or, as the Smashing Pumpkins might say, in spite of all our rage, we’re still just rats in a cage? This piece in the Columbian gives a shot at figuring it out, and even quotes your illustrious blogger: Gambling is an example of variable or intermittent reinforcement. A gambler learns
Of rats and machine players Read More »
gambling & culture, news about gamblingMachine gambling used to be quite common in urban America, as this column from the Pasadena Star-News shows: Pasadena in 1937 was a gambling den of sorts. Slot machines and pinball machines that made cash payoffs were common in the business areas of town. But change was coming. The Pasadena Post wrote on March 13,
Gambling in Pasadena Read More »
gambling & culture