If you’re looking for a definitive answer on who will win the Melbourne Cup – the world’s most prestigious two-mile handicap – I’m afraid I’m going to leave you sorely disappointed. What I can offer is…
Australia’s iconic sporting event – the Melbourne Cup – will see more than 100,000 punters pack into Flemington Racecourse this Tuesday, while those at work around the country pause to tune in to The Race…
You might assume that when it comes to poker anything goes. Isn’t it all about bluffing and lying? Perhaps, but there are of course still a set of rules, and to break these would constitute cheating. But…
During the past two decades, the US casino industry has expanded dramatically. According to the American Gaming Association, there are now nearly 1,000 commercial and tribal casinos in the country. Plans…
My brief experience in a casino was pretty typical, I’d say. Flashing lights. The faint smell of booze. Not much chatter among patrons. The sounds of dice rolling, machines buzzing, and coins clanking…
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…
The Queensland government has recently implemented changes to poker machine regulation under the banner of “red tape reduction”. Some of these are relatively minor at first glance; others have more obvious…
The proposed Aquis casino resort in Cairns is edging ever closer to regulatory approval. The development is touted by proponents as a “man-made wonder of the world” and will cost billions to develop. The…
The Greens have tabled a bill in the Victorian parliament that would introduce a maximum bet of $1 per spin for the state’s 30,000 poker machines. While the bill is almost certain to fail, the introduction…
Most people are aware of the harms of problem gambling. Playing pokie machines, placing bets and visiting casinos can be a very expensive form of entertainment. And when gamblers lose more than they can…
Given my academic background it may come as little surprise that when I gamble, I expect to lose in the long run. But, that is not to say that I don’t have some golden rules that I apply in gambling situations…
The more money spent per capita on pokies in a venue, the higher the rate of gambling problems in that venue. This is the straightforward conclusion of our research recently published in the journal Addiction…
In the lead up to the World Cup, there has been speculation across the media that World Cup matches might be fixed, including reports from the UK’s National Crime Agency that a warm-up friendly between…
Earlier this month, a team of British anthropologists from Goldsmiths College of the University of London published a report about the mundane, if very lucrative, world of Big Gambling and the cadre of…
The third season of Breaking Bad, the American TV drama series about a crystal meth dealer in Albuquerque, contains a key scene about the business side of an emerging crime empire. Here, the unscrupulous…
The Cameron government’s reported willingness to curb some of the excesses of electronic casino games in betting shops (fixed odds betting terminals) is to be welcomed. Yet without far-reaching reforms…
Imagine yourself, a picture of sartorial elegance and sipping champagne from a crystal flute, in Le Grande Casino at Monte Carlo. It is a Monday night – in fact, the date is August 18, 1913 – and you are…
“Aboriginal gambling” has become something of a hot-button issue in recent years. A number of academic research articles have documented the “risk factors” for Aboriginal people that increase their likelihood…
Although Australia is often portrayed as a nation of gamblers, we still know relatively little about the extent to which gambling affects our society. One blind spot in our knowledge is the impact of gambling…
The future of Australia’s pokies pre-commitment scheme – which enables players to set a limit on how much they’re prepared to lose – is in doubt, with Labor likely to support the Coalition’s move to repeal…
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University