Is gambling bad for you — listen to what scientists say

People talk about gambling in different ways, some people believe that it should not be practised or you will become addicted, while others see it as a regular entertainment for which you can get some extra money. Gambling and everything associated with it is a very popular topic for researchers and scientists around the world. BestAuCasinosOnline decided to compile and share the results of these studies.

Hungry players play better

This study was carried out in autumn 2014 at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Researchers concluded that players who did not eat before playing make better and more informed decisions.

To find out, the researchers asked a group of volunteers not to eat in the evening and in the morning before the trial. A second group ate as usual. In the afternoon, they were asked to solve gambling-related tasks on a computer. As a result, hungry participants solved their problems more quickly and correctly than those who were full.

In another challenge, students had to answer the question of whether they would choose a little money right now or a lot more money in the future. Hungry students mostly chose the second option, while well-fed students chose the first. Hungry participants were therefore more inclined to think about the future.

Gambling trains the brain

Games are good for the brain. Whether it’s video games or gambling, they all stimulate the brain and develop certain areas of it. Some games can develop motor skills, others can train and improve memory. But can they be a prevention or even a cure for disease?

In the summer of 2014, a team of scientists investigated the effects of poker on patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and then presented their research at the International Conference of the Alzheimer’s Association in Copenhagen. There are a lot of scientists around the world working on this problem.  As it turns out, poker can also contribute to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, so the result from a team of researchers from the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute was received with enthusiasm.

They studied 329 people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. It turned out that subjects who regularly played cards, or chess, or solved crossword puzzles had more developed areas of the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. They also performed better in memory tests and cognitive ability tests.

Online gambling can reduce stress

Gambling provides entertainment, offers communication, and can also reduce stress levels. Research conducted at McGill University in Montreal found that online gambling contributes to people’s overall health. According to the researchers, the players’ blood cortisol levels are reduced by an average of 17%, and hence they are less stressed.

Other scientists have come to the same conclusion. A 6-month study at East Carolina University, which involved 134 subjects, found that online gambling reduces stress and improves mood. Research carried out by Oxford University has shown that online gambling has a beneficial effect on people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Further, several online casinos recently conducted surveys of blackjack players and 74% of players surveyed said that gambling was a great way for them to have fun and relieve stress.

So if you’ve had a tough day, play your favourite game in Australian online casino and forget about the stress!

Gambling addiction and cognitive impairment

Of course, gambling can not only have positive effects on health, but also negative ones if one develops an addiction to it. One study suggests that the development of gambling addiction may be due to an actual brain disorder.

The study was conducted by scientists from Constance University and Clarkson University in New York. Their work has shown that addicted gamers often exhibit cognitive impairment. Cognitive functions are abilities that connect us to the world around us and allow us to make sense of it. Although these impairments do not always develop in addicts, they are nevertheless associated with the disease.

This study shows that gamblers with addiction often make bad decisions because they see a pattern where there is none. For example, they cling to imaginary probabilities and think that a roulette ball which went red ten times is bound to go to black.

Addictive players performed significantly worse on attentional tasks in comparison with healthy people.

Hot hand effect

In 2014, Jumi Xu and Nigel Harvey, researchers at University College London, published a study confirming the existence of the hot hand effect in gambling. This is the idea that after the first win, your chances of subsequent wins increase.

The authors of the study took a sample of 569,915 real bets placed by 776 players at a bookmaker’s office and tracked how previous wins and losses affected the probability of winning in the future.

The initial percentage of winning bets was about 48%. Xu and Harvey separated out the winners and tracked what happened to their subsequent bets.

1. The second bet was won by 49% of the selected winners.
2. Next, of the players who won two bets in a row, the third bet was won by 57%.
3. The fourth bet was won by 67%.
4. Fifth bet — 72%.
5. The odds of winning the sixth bet were a fantastic 76%.

What about the losers? And the losers continued to lose money. Of the 190,359 bookmakers who lost their initial bet, 53% lost their second bet. Those who had enough money left over for a third bet lost 65% of the time. When they lost five bets in a row, their chances of winning fell to 23%.

There was no correlation between the winning and losing streaks and the skill of the players: there were both successful and unsuccessful players. Researchers think that both winning and losing streaks were influenced by player mistake. Those who were winning began to be more careful in their wagering because they feared their luck was going to run out. Losers began putting riskier bets with larger odds in order to win back their losses, believing that their bad luck was going to stop.