How to Play Online Slots Games & Make Huge Money

Online Slots Games

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Many online Slot games at various casinos have options to make it less complicated to pick out the coin size you need to pay for. constantly start with the low coins, and you’ll straight away get a number of games for your investment. You play for an extra time, which means you win if you lose, you lose little. further, the extra time you spend on the sport the extra probabilities get of triumphing the large jackpot.

4 helpful tips for playing slots:

Slots are the most performed video games at each online and land-based casino. Those video games are exhilarating and clean to play, that is why they’re so popular amongst casino gamers. Even for gamers who have simply gotten into the online casino commercial enterprise, slots are usually their preferred because of their sincere policies and the interesting experience they give. Slots are the most played video games at each online and land-primarily based casinos. these video games are exhilarating and easy to play, that’s why they will be so famous among online casino games. Even for game enthusiasts who have just gotten into the online online casino business, slots are continuously their preferred due to their sincere regulations and the exciting degree they supply.

  1. Bet for the maximum number of paylines

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Having a bet for the maximum is probably a bit costly, but it increases your chances of prevailing by the way. So, whether or not you’re playing at an internet online casino or a land-based totally one, this method will be just right for you.

  1. Bet enough to be eligible for jackpots & Bonuses

Playing is all about taking risks, so don’t hesitate to take your possibilities at the revolutionary Jackpot. you may, however, should surround bets which are slightly higher than the common in case you need to be part of the revolutionary Jackpot. The chances of winning this Jackpot are constantly so slim, however, when you hit it, the cash gained will in all likelihood trade your life.

For maximum online slots, the Jackpot is revolutionary, this means that it will increase in cost the more the number of people worried. So, it is important to display the Jackpot size as you play to know how good a deal money is up for prevailing simply if you hit it.

  1. Don’t go for the complex Online Slots

Most people tend to be drawn to online slot machine games with masses of graphical effects and animations because they look amusing and appealing.

However, numerous research displays that those styles of games generally have tiny odds of triumphing over the greater straightforward slots. So, on every occasion you visit any online casino internet site with slots, pick the most effective ones; you may have extra probabilities of winning there.

Selecting simple slots has been tested as one of the tricks to win slot games. gambling more sincere slots are likewise greater a laugh because the whole thing is simplified, making it easy to find the buttons you need and the various sports alternatives. So, besides complex image designs and animations, there’s nothing proper about those hard slot gadget games that many online casinos are interested in.

  1. Know when to leave

Slots are enjoyable and addictive, so it’s crucial to self-discipline yourself and knows while it’s far proper to depart every time you exit to play them. without this type of you can end up spending lots of money that weren’t supposed for playing. time and money that you spend gambling slots should stay limited.

Acknowledging that some days are awful could be very important, particularly when dropping. when it is a bad day, don’t try to bet more money than what you had intended, because you can quit dropping all of it, on the way to give you further sadness.

Gambling Male

Gambling male

Gender is an important topic in contemporary gambling studies, not only given the underestimation of female gambling. Excess and utility, on the contrary, are not, or to be more precise, have been subsumed and then concealed by psychiatric and economic language, the former (excess) being referred to as a problem, compulsive, or pathological gambling, and the latter (utility) reduced to the behavior of the economic gambler, a person who plays with the rational intent of making a profit.

Excess is, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, ‘an amount that is more than acceptable, expected, or reasonable.’ An extent or amount which is immoderate and extreme, which goes beyond what is socially prescribed and results in what is proscribed or explicitly forbidden by shared values of a certain society, if not by formal norms. When used as a noun, it is synonymous with extra. Excess cannot be referred to without implying a connection to the extreme.

Excess Gambling

A better understanding of the notion of excess requires a brief consideration of what is usually understood to be its opposite, namely utility. After being recast in Darwinian evolutionism as the idea of survival utilities and in Marx’s emphasis on useful labor as the mainspring of the human condition, the principle of utility remains of crucial importance in contemporary thought. Utilitarianism is a theory which considers the best action to be the one that is best able to maximize utility.

It is based on Bentham’s notion of utility as ‘that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness’. According to research, even while criticizing utilitarian theory, did not break with the idea of slavery to utility and rationality as forces driving human action.

The principle of utility has not been radically challenged in contemporary mainstream sociology either, creating a juxtaposition between utility and excess where the latter notion is seen as a negative phenomenon to be contained. No example is more appropriate than the German sociologist Beck’s analysis of excess in terms of calculation of risk and security. In coining the term ‘risk society’ he referred to dangers created by globalization such as radioactivity, pollution, and unemployment, issues capable of generating concern in people from all classes, and, consequently, strategies to insulate oneself from these risks.

The contemporary age offers a variety of examples of the rise of excess. These are not confined to cases of extremism inspired by religion or ideology but instead are embodied in the everyday behavior of people. They include political populism which leads to the election of excessive leaders such as Donald Trump or an excessive and ultra-conservative reaction to socio-political problems (voting for Brexit or supporting xenophobic and anti-European parties).

The excessive power of Internet oligopolies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google should also be mentioned, with their collection and ownership of an excess of data, a more apt term instead of the polite scientific language which calls the enormous amounts involved Big Data.

Today’s art market and the art auction world, providing an arena in which huge sums of money can be blatantly consumed, offer another apt illustration of hyperbolic exaggeration.

‘At times it has appeared,’ researcher notes, ‘that excess, rather than utility, has become the dynamic of contemporary social transformation, that the endless pursuit of utility has driven society into excess’. If we limit our argument to the examples listed above, it is no surprise that the supporters of Trump, Brexit, and Marine Le Pen view the output of their favorite as rational definitions of economic and social issues.

Due to the lack of concern shown by users when they provide information about themselves while pursuing personal utilities, including the construction and maintenance of social networks of friends and creating an appealing online persona to promote their own activities and skills, Facebook is allowed to act as ‘the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind’. This is why ‘utility and excess must not be conceived as binary oppositions, as mutually exclusive’.

Gambling is an apt terrain for an investigation of the controversial relationship between utility and excess. On the one hand, gambling is a phenomenon characterized by many nuances ranging from excess in problem and pathological gambling to recreational activity, a socially acceptable behavior.

On the other hand, it highlights a moral definition of excess whereby gamblers who have ‘lost control’ are labeled as pathological, yet the term used by the state when increasing the possibility to gamble, through more games, more gaming sites, and an increased frequency of extractions, is legalization.

Gambling, then, reveals that excess is declared or not depending on the agent who exceeds. I term this the social hierarchy of excess gambling. Losing is a noble action when performed by wealthy classes as a form of ostentatious expenditure through games of skill that assume that players are skilled, while it is ignoble when associated with lower socio-economic groups addicted to ‘games of chance.’

According to the researcher’s vision of excess, the modern calculation of utility is not able to provide a full sense of existing as a human being. The market economy acts as the ideological framework legitimating utility as a principle of social action; manifestations of excess are discouraged, if not explicitly limited.

The researcher’s attention focuses in particular on unproductive and profitless expenditure. In his influential essay, The Notion of Expenditure, the French intellectual sees utility as theorized by classical approaches to be something to be aimed at because it provides pleasure, ‘but only in a moderate form since violent pleasure is seen as pathological’. If this material pleasure is reduced to acquisition and conservation of goods, its role is that of a concession instead of a diversion. It is tolerated when productive, or at least when it does not conflict with productive and utilitarian needs.

Non-productive expenditure

is identified as the opposite of any rational consumption, and consequently denied and stigmatized. But, as ‘human activity is not entirely reducible to processes of production and conservation’, unproductive expenditure remains a part of the behavior of any social agent.

The researcher’s list of ‘useless’ activities includes ‘luxury, mourning, war, cults, the construction of sumptuary monuments, games, spectacles, arts, perverse sexual activity (i.e., deflected from genital finality)’. Unproductivity, in these examples, lies in the lack of ends and the enormity and irrationality of the loss. As to gambling, cited early by the author, ‘the loss of insane sums of money is set in motion in the form of wagers’, so that gamblers are led to losses disproportionate to their possessions.

What they betray is the utilitarian faith in the principle of balanced accounts. This faith claims to compensate for expenditure with an acquisition. Excess gamblers destroy and do not create any capital, winning is merely a result of either accidental or statistically unlikely action whose expected consequence is losing. The win is the apparent utilitarian goal of a process where the economic rationale is achieved only from the perspective of the cashier, in line with the refrain ‘the house always wins,’ and not from that of the bettor. Fighting a perpetual battle to balance previous losses, ‘players can never retire from the game’ and are ‘at the mercy of a need for limitless loss’.

There is no doubt that unproductive expenditure may be viewed as functional if, in a sociological framework, it is interpreted as an ostentatious form of leisure class consumption. This is the type of gambling accurately described by Dostoyevsky in The Gambler, where the money wasted by the aristocracy and wealthy classes is a means of displaying their fortune.

However, the rise of gambling in recent decades has mainly affected the middle and lower socio-economic groups, where the Veblenian-flavoured ostentatious loss is replaced by a different form of profitless expenditure. Such an excess represents, for these consumers of the entertainment industry, both a trap and a symbolic revolt. Many scholars and journalists denounce gambling as a trap because they claim that lower socio-economic groups are ‘deceived’ by a coalition between the State and commercial concessionaires.

This alliance has created a marketable to exploit the citizen’s desire for social and economic redemption through the chance of a better life paid for by a scratch card or a coin inserted into a gaming machine. Actually, the word ‘deception’ risks becoming misleading here as it implies that these groups neither recognize nor understand the mendacity that lies at the base of the gaming industry, and the promise of a state of well-being that cannot be attained. It would be more correct to state that it is an ideological trap where gamblers continue to lose money and to take pleasure in it precisely because they know exactly the system works. As the researcher points out, ‘knowledge has very limited power to unsettle ideology’ and its efficiency in material and everyday practices.

Gambling, in its extreme, compulsive, and pathological forms, is also a revolt, it enhances a rebellion because it represents a direct challenge to the value of money and to the rational principles of the homo oeconomicus.

Places of Excess

Excess gambling in the form of the researcher’s non-productive expenditure takes place behind closed or partially closed doors (gambling halls, hidden corners of public bars). This spatial separation may support the idea that excess has disappeared from public space – or at least that the designers of those spaces try to confine excess to a more private sphere.

The word ‘designer’ is used here, in the broad sense and includes those social agents who contribute to the establishment of both the structural features and the social meaning of the space.

This means not only the gaming industry professionals responsible for the architecture of the rooms, the creation of gambling environments where both light and sounds are studied to lock the gambler in a timeless bubble, the design of the machines and the elaboration of the game schemes able to create a compulsive relationship between the individual and the machine, but also legislators who design regulations inspired by the protection of public health (for example, the placement of video lotteries in an area inaccessible to minors and separate from the non-gambling public, or the use of opaque glass to obscure the ‘dangerous’ behavior from public view).

Within the public space of a bar or a store, a private zone is created for compulsive games like slot machines, while what is perceived as ‘recreational gambling’ may take place openly. The designers seem to be concerned that the privacy and habits of certain categories of gamblers are protected from scrutiny and that the public role of a person does not include the exhibition of addiction to machines. The boundary between the public and private realms, progressively removed over the last century, is artificially rebuilt by the gambling industry through the architecture of the space.

To have contact with gambling as a real phenomenon, we must first access gambling sites. With this in mind, I conducted a three-month ethnography in 23 Milanese locations where gambling took place to learn about the world of gamblers by observing their activities, and to assess to what extent space can enhance excessive behavior.

Despite the popular image of the bright nightlife in Las Vegas, the contemporary gambling industry generates its main profits not in casinos but through a ubiquitous and capillary urban network of shops and corners where gambling has become a daily activity rather than an occasional and adventurous escape. This example naturally excludes the new online gaming industry – a world that is not investigated in this essay, but that is a prominent part of contemporary gambling.

This landscape is a product of the progressive legalization of gambling in most European states over the last 30 years. Its evolution in Italy may be divided into three-phase. The first involved a drawn-out childhood period from 1946 with the launch of schedina, a popular prognostic game based on football matches, followed in the mid-80s by a restricted gambling industry and a clear distinction between gambling venues such as casinos and racecourses, and places of daily contact, bars, and tobacconists for example, with little or no presence of games.

The second phase may be termed the unruly adolescence. This period of maturation was characterized by legalization and the progressive introduction of new games, including slot machines, video lotteries, and online products, until the beginning of the 2010s. The Italian normative model which emerged from this process is characterized by a strong presence of the State as a regulator, even if gambling is actually managed by private concessionaries within a competitive and government-licensed market. This is in effect a perfect example of the neoliberal alliance between the State and private companies, where the search for a mutual benefit has shaped legislation that other European countries are imitating.

This is the premise of the third and more adult phase, whose maturity is visible both in the economic structure of gambling (a flourishing industry supported by a State interested in maximizing fiscal revenues) and in the growing awareness of its social costs. The available data on incidence reveals that more than half (54%) of the general population aged 15-74 gamble at least once a year, while problem gamblers in Italy are estimated at between 1.3% and 3.8% of the population (767,000 to 2,296,000 adults), and pathological gamblers vary from 0.5% to 2.2% (302,000 to 1,329000 persons).

Anti-gambling organizations and local administrations are pressuring for a public debate on (and against) gambling, and the first restrictive law was presented by the Health Ministry in 2012, accompanied by regional laws approved by 16 out of 21 Italian local authorities (19 regions and two autonomous provinces) and aimed at combating the proliferation of gambling sites.

Gambling has become an everyday presence in Italy, especially after the legalization policies promoted by both center-left and center-right governments in the 1990s and in the 2000s, thanks to (or because of) two types of venues. Bars and tobacconists (BTs) are of the first type. Accessible to any member of the public, they are the most visible proof that gambling has become a ubiquitous phenomenon within consumer culture. The second are specialized outlets (SOs), such as Bingo halls, slot rooms, and betting rooms, and are locations devoted exclusively to gambling and forbidden to minors.

SOs do not contradict the trend towards the ubiquity and normalization of gambling as mainstream entertainment, since they are widely spread throughout both urban and rural areas. Far from being radically isolated from everyday reality, as casinos or racecourse are, they paradoxically make an escape from routine part of the daily experience. BTs licensed for the sale of games represent a hybrid environment in which the supply of food, beverages, and tobacco is found side-by-side with a range of lotteries, scratch cards, and bets.

Upon entering a BT, I often noted that the visual elements related to gambling (ads, walls full of scratch cards, corners with slot machines, etc.) were more prominently displayed than other goods and services sold by the shop. ‘It is only later that one understands that the site is also a tobacco store’, I wrote in one of my field notes.

It is true that SOs are recognizable from outside as sites for gambling, but at the same time, it is not possible externally to know the details of what is happening inside. Dark glass facades and solid walls prevent citizens from seeing gamblers and their activities.

This ‘protection’ means that passers-by are spared the sight of the actual gambling practices. However, such concealment creates an ideal environment for the excessive behavior of whoever is inside the premises.

The differences between BFs and SOs may also be highlighted in the following five juxtapositions:

BT disorder vs. SO maniacal order and cleanness

The former has an atmosphere of familiarity due to the coexistence of games, cafeteria, and tobacco products, together with a sensory hyper-stimulation through screens and loudspeakers tuned to a radio or sound source. In the latter, the space is extensive and has been organized in order to avoid overlapping or confusion between rooms dedicated to gambling and the refreshments areas.

The small spaces of a BT (with overlapping areas) vs. the expansive spaces of a SO

 The spatial organization in BTs requires consumers to interpret where the different closely placed services (gambling, food, tobacco) are, while SOs offers the freedom to circulate, inviting people to follow the shorter route to reach a specific product or service.

<h5>BT naturalness vs. SO artificiality. The chaos in bars appears synonymous with a natural and spontaneous environment. The artificial lighting, cautious design, and consistency with the brand image of the particular gambling concessionaire make an SO a space-separated completely from the flow of everyday life.

BT noise vs. SO silence

An analysis of auditory stimuli underlines the contrast between the raised voices and normal, day-to-day confusion of BTs and the aseptic extra-ordinary dimension of SOs. Here, sounds such as coins won in the slot machines sometimes interrupt the silence, but the background noises of city life are far away.

BT mobility vs. SO stability:

BTs are dynamic sites with consumers entering and leaving non-stop, while gamblers in an SO stay longer, move less, and remain focused on one activity at a time. This description is a necessary premise in order to clarify the spatial landscapes offered to gamblers and to make some assumptions on how the spaces of gambling may favor excess and profitless expenditure.

This seems to be possible in at least three ways. Firstly, BTs as highly diffused stores make gambling ubiquitous. They allow an everyday excess made of seemingly limited bets, whereby the regular monthly sum may be a considerable amount. For example, I observed during my research that it was common for many retirees to spend more than €30 on scratch cards every morning.

Secondly, SOs are constructed behind walls where playing is possible without the activity being visible from the outside. Social stigma is reduced and the passing of time is not perceived in these artificial places. They become ideal places for cultivating excess and are even more captivating when devoted to highly compulsive games such as slot machines and video lotteries. The third aspect is a transverse dimension to both categories. The adolescence of gambling noted above was characterized, among other features, by the diffusion of games with a higher payout frequency.

Lotto extractions take place three times a week instead of weekly, 10eLotto extractions occur every five minutes, and scratch cards and slot machines can be played at any time for an instantaneous win. In short, the games introduced or modified in the last 30 years have produced a shorter interval between purchase and win/loss, and subsequently between the first purchase and the next.

Dependency, in the form of a compulsion to gamble, is facilitated both by the availability of everyday opportunities to gamble and by the contexts capable of creating a kind of space-time bubble, a player’s isolation from the flow of daily life. This is particularly evident in the case of slot machines which are in an isolated location in the marginal areas of BTs and along the walls in SOs combined with structural features offering visual stimulation and the sound of coins falling during wins, capable of creating a completely immersive experience.

During my visit to a video lottery terminal site, a 65-year-old man sitting in front of a machine and holding a glass full of coins said ‘Call me at 11 o’clock, as I should go home to have lunch.’ His request to the shop owner demonstrated an awareness of his incapacity to maintain control, and the possibility of losing temporal cognition.

Biographies of Excess

If we assume that the observation of gambling sites is able to provide elements to understand how space can act as a facilitator of excess, then in-depth interviews with pathological gamblers may better illuminate players’ reasons and practices. Adrenaline is the most oft-cited word used to describe the relationship between a gambler and games, and it is linked to both well-being, excitement, and obsession.

If I don’t play I don’t feel well [laughs], it makes me feel good […] The competition, the adrenaline rush when I see the results in front of me.

As far as I am concerned, that is the reason to bet.

I liked playing because it was a challenge.

This adrenaline rush is surprisingly not linked to a state of full enjoyment. The emotions observed in gambling sites, both positive and negative, are always moderate and controlled. ‘When you win you feel satisfied, but not euphoric’, and when one loses there is a disappointment, not despair.

I have no happy memories of those afternoons in the bar because I always left upset because whether you win or always lose, you are never happy.

When I lost I felt a little bored, I wanted to change my life. I was so nervous and melancholic when I went home.

In any interviewee’s account, there is a moment where a behavior which appeared under control was subject to a progressive increase in frequency and number of bets, leading to a lack of control and separation from reality.

I remember when I started, I was at the Cascina Gobba [tube station], where the machines are. I had stopped for a coffee […] I paid €5 and they gave me €4 change. There was someone playing the machines and I heard ti-ti-ti-ti-ti and all these coins fell out. I said to myself “Why not? What the Hell do I care, it’s only €4.” I put the money in, and a Bonus came up. I didn’t even know what it was. It gave me €200! I said “This is better than working”, if this happens every day […] I went to the bar and cashed the €200 Bonus.

I put it into my pocket, went home, and felt satisfied with myself. The next day I left home and went again because I take the metro there every day. I saw the machine and changed €50 […] when I had finished I had won €200 plus what I had

in my pocket, another €150. At that point, I said to myself “Tomorrow I am coming earlier. I will give up work and come here.” That is how I started, coming every second day, and then I went somewhere else, and in the end, a huge hole had formed.

Similar stories mark the decline into excess gambling, an evolution that goes hand-in-hand with an alienation of the player who becomes totally immersed in a parallel universe.

I played the slots, I couldn’t even tolerate someone standing behind me.

I lived in another world and when I got home at night I was half-mad, I didn’t eat.

I lost all my friends, especially in the end when I went out only to play.

A player is alone […] When you enter the world of gambling nothing else exists, you don’t feel hungry, thirsty, you don’t go to the toilet, don’t drink, don’t smoke… At that point you no longer exist, you’re inside a shell. You play and that’s all.

The dimension of excess appears to function as a separate realm, at least at the beginning of the pathological phase. Evidence can be found in the interviewee’s accounts describing the clear separation between every day and professional life, and the time devoted to gambling.

I went to work as normal, [but as soon as] I left work I had my routine appointment.

I am a man people respect, I have 35 people who work for me and in 15 years I have never been accused of anything. But when I leave work I become another person.

A man who plays games of chance is a man with three personalities— his work persona, which is respected by his clients, [as well as] the man who gambles, […] and then there is the man who enters his home in the evening and has to account [to his family] for what he has done during the day.

However, in any story of excess gambling there comes a time when it is no longer possible to conceal the addiction, and the consequences for work and family begin to appear. The deterioration in family relationships ranges from the quality of everyday life (‘When you gamble online you become one with the PC, with your smartphone, the TV, and therefore you have no time for your children nor your wife, to separation from loved ones (the wife asks for a divorce, the children no longer speak to their father), not to mention lies and theft (‘I asked my mother for her ATM card to collect her pension and I stole the money,’ admitted a gambler.

Similarly, another gambler said ‘I was a signatory on my mother’s bank account, I took her money without telling her. Later I confessed because I was disgusted with myself.’) These gamblers suffered from feelings of complete failure and often regretted wasting their lives.

I threw away everything I have ever achieved as a man, as a carpenter, the faith everyone around me had in me. Perhaps I only imagine it, but I think that people now look at me very differently, I destroyed myself, I gambled away the chance to be a good father, which is what hurts most, I gambled away my chance to be a good husband.

The economic consequences are devastating. Every interviewed, without exception, reported debts of thousands of euro, mainly with banks and financial companies, together with an accumulation of other debts with private individuals (‘I get between 30 to 40 phone calls a day, from people who want money from me,’ Loss of business is another frequent issue in interviewees’ accounts.

We had a bar and we had to close because of the debts.

I am self-employed, I had a car transport business with my brother…

The problem began with the financial crisis in 2008, up until then gambling was just a pastime. [I told myself] I was playing to recover the money. […] It came to the point where my brother noticed that I was taking money that was not mine…it was the company’s money.

Excess gambling may also lead to health and psychological problems.

I was under so much stress that I had 2 heart attacks.

I also tried to kill myself, I was riding my motorbike and I closed my eyes.

For the purposes of this study, a gamblers’ relationship with money is of particular interest. Every interviewee remembered their fall into excess as strongly associated with a lack of control over money and its value. The inner logic of excess gambling lies exactly here— money is no longer perceived and used as money.

Gamblers are far beyond over-spending in an unproductive manner. The sums they spend/invest in gambling are undeniably disproportionate to their incomes. Moreover, a return to gambling after a significant loss does not serve the purpose of only recovering money, but rather that of rebalancing the account with the ‘fates’. The rational part of the gambler perfectly knows he has no statistical chance of winning against the bank, but his need for excess keeps his gambling.

[I understood I had gone too far] when I ran out of money! [laughs] Because when you are at it you don’t notice how much money you are spending, not even when it is €150 a day… Money has no value for you. There is no specific moment [when you understand you have lost control]. When you are immersed in it, it is as if you have been caught by an avalanche and you can’t fight your way out.

I remember one day that I had gone to finish up a job, and they paid me €1,000. On the way home I found a gambling hall, I won €900 with €30… I then went to the video lotteries and I lost everything… proof that I had lost all control. And then I had to pay a supplier and borrow the money to pay him.

I spent more than half of my salary.

I have had winnings of €3,000, 4,000 5,000, and in three days I had nothing left… if I had €100 in my pocket I wasted €100, if I had €1,000 in my pocket I would have wasted €1,000.

You never get the money back; you keep falling till you hit rock bottom. The biographies I collected illustrate a recurring process where economic problems, once discovered by family members, lead to a familiar crisis.

In parallel, the gambler is no longer able to hide his addiction from colleagues or employers, because the excess gambling begins to affect his performance in the workplace. Family and work complications make it obvious to the gambler that he has lost the control he thought he had over his gambling, and that a therapeutic pathway is needed to recover his social relationships.

What I have described in few lines is a process that develops over many years, a period during which the gambler becomes familiar with excess through the negation of the value of the money he has spent in an unproductive manner. This is an implicit negation of the utilitarian values which characterize a productive and capitalist society, one where profitless activities are regarded as dysfunctional for individuals and society as a whole.

Extreme Losers

Both excess and excessive gambling are cultural constructs where the definition is largely indebted to an epistemology of disease and disorder as used in psychiatry. In fact, the term ‘pathological gambler’ was introduced by the American Psychiatric Association in its 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM-III, followed by two successive editions, DSM-IV and DSM-V), and is connoted by the presence of a set of ‘symptoms’ and measured through diagnostic tools.

Excess is an activity which may also have a further significance for our purposes. In the researcher’s interpretation, the excess is the result of the proliferation of the ideology of utility, a kind of reaction to the sovereignty of functional obligations.

Ours is a society founded on proliferation, on growth which continues even though it cannot be measured against any clear goals. An excrescential society whose development is uncontrollable, occurring without regard for self-definition, where the accumulation of effects goes hand in hand with the disappearance of causes. The upshot is gross systemic congestion and malfunction caused by hypertelia – by an excess of functional imperatives, by a sort of saturation.

In biology, hypertely is an extreme overdevelopment of an organ which then becomes disadvantageous and damaging to the animal concerned, an exaggerated degree of growth not explainable by the utility. the researcher coined hypertelia to describe the excessive degree of consumption and production not based on utility and observed within contemporary societies, where our needs and the objects we purchase to meet them are no longer related through their usefulness.

The paradox of excess gambling is grounded in its two-fold nature of entertainment and of reaction to utilitarianism. Gambling expanded within liberalized markets and became a mainstream leisure activity for consumers. It is also a response or backlash to the hypertelic profit and utilitarian mentality. Whereas the utilitarian ideology prescribes useful and profitable activities, to invest money despite the evident statistical probability of loss is an act of resistance to the values of utilitarian and capitalistic society.

Gambling may therefore be seen as a perfect example of the ‘insubordinate function of free expenditure’, as well as a form of sovereignty of the Self over social constraints. This sovereignty, which ‘constitutes the region formally exempt from self-interested intrigues to which the oppressed subject refers as to an empty but pure satisfaction’, reveals the unwillingness to submit oneself to the household economy through a feeling of superiority, a moment where instead of serving life, life serves the individual.

Curiously, excess gambling particularly demonstrates its potential as a tool of sovereignty in the most recent advertisement campaigns promoted by Italian gambling concessionaries, where the used keywords are ‘safety’ and ‘responsibility’ – an attempt by the industry to distance itself from the negative image of gambling.

Consumers find it difficult to trust current marketing trends which present ‘a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol’ and gamblers do not believe in gambling without risk, nor the ‘decaffeinated’ representations offered by advertising.

On the contrary, they are eager to experience passion through excess and risk where individual forces are liberated in a state of excitation, rational laws of calculation are substituted by pseudo-rationality, unproductive values are created. Though it may seem a paradox, one true within the realm of intellectual argument and not linked with the reality of gambler behavior, gambling functions as a liberation from the constraints of a market economy, where individuals are dominated.

Pathological gamblers fail as citizens because they are not able to grasp the chances of personal growth offered by society, as husbands and parents because they cannot take care of their families, as consumers because they are unable to enjoy gambling as merely a form of pleasure and entertainment just as the commercial industry of gambling invites them to do. However, in extreme gambling, where the money is no longer money, a new sphere of action is created, excitation is freed and the illogical becomes logical.

The rational choice model underlying utilitarianism states that individual actions are the consequences of a motive. In line with this, excess gambling is irrational and, which is the same, immoral, both for an industrial society where it stands as an example of unproductive activity, and a post-industrial consumerist one where the dysfunctional gambler fails as a consumer. The difference lies in the attitude toward recreational gambling, which is tolerated in the latter but not in the former. Despite this, one might argue that excessive gambler is the ultimate consumer.

As the only thing a gambler does is consume, their behavior is in fact harmful to consumer society because they overspend rapidly to the point of bankruptcy, while the ideal consumer maintains an ability to spend over time.

A seductive image of a process to describe excess gambling is that of creative destruction, not in the economic sense of a process of industrial mutation that revolutionizes the economic structure from within, but as a desire to remove what came before in order to set up what will come next. Such a tension of opposing experiences, destructive and creative is typical of modernism and seems to act as the perversion of excessive gambling. An extreme behavior destroys wealth, through endless losses, to create the illusion of a world ruled by non-utility laws.

The interviewees illustrate this well when their debts have caused the failure of a family company or they have brought about their own destruction through non-stop slot machine gaming.

An approach oriented to viewing excessive gambling as an act of sovereignty also leads to a reconsideration of the notion of utility. Players appear to derive a form of pleasure while immersed in the act of gambling, despite the evidence of economic losses. This activity is deemed useless if the utility is measured in terms of the (catastrophic) consequences of the gambler’s behavior, but has usefulness if we take into consideration the utility of the whole process.

Gambling, in fact, may provide social rewards, such as prestige, in specific contexts where the excessive player measures themselves with other gamblers and, in the researcher’s dramaturgical terms, attempts to favorably impress others by demonstrating skill.

Masculine gambling, when excessive, creates an extreme loser, one who is devoted to an expenditure so profitless and useless that money has no longer meaning as such, it is merely a medium to experience excess. Gambling has been often read as a mechanism of social domination and a tool for mass distraction and a relief valve for subordinate classes. What if a further function of gambling is a form of resilient consumption in which socially oppressed or marginalized

individuals and groups may experience freedom, breaking the social constraints linked to utilitarian values by denying them through an extremely unproductive expenditure?

Following the researcher lexicon once again, such a function may be viewed in terms of a (momentary) recovery of sovereignty, where a compulsive, addictive, profitless, exaggerated (in short, excessive) session of gambling acts as a means to control the forces to which gamblers are submitted. Marginalized victims of neoliberal capitalism, economic failures unable to attain the material success they desire, they regain sovereignty through the destruction of economic capital.

If money is, from a Marxist standpoint, the ultimate foundation of any social relationship and the goal of any productive activity, its destruction serves the double purpose of dismantling one’s network ties and of denying capitalistic values, as clearly testified by the interviewees’ biographies collected in this essay. Here lies the contradictory nature of gambling – the compulsive loss of control as defined under the psychiatric approach becomes, in the topsy-turvy world of gamblers, a way to take control by challenging the rules to which they feel subjugated in the utilitarian realm.

When conceptualizing gambling as submission, guilt, and anxiety, the interviewees are expressing a retreat from an exceptional state of sovereignty and, through medical and psychological care, they are regaining a condition of ‘normality’ where their past behavior can only appear inappropriate. Rebellion and sovereignty are now in the past.

Gambling and Gaming

Gambling and Gaming

The increasing convergence of the gambling and gaming industries has raised questions about the extent to which social casino gameplay may influence gambling.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between social casino gaming and gambling through an online survey of 521 adults who played social casino games in the previous 12 months. Most social casino game users (71.2%) reported that these games had no impact on how much they gambled.

However, 9.6% reported that their gambling overall had increased and 19.4% reported that they had gambled for money as a direct result of these games. Gambling as a direct result of social casino games was more common among males, younger users, those with higher levels of problem gambling severity and more involved social casino game users in terms of gameplay frequency and in-game payments.

The most commonly reported reason for gambling as a result of playing social casino games was to win real money. As social casino games increased gambling for some users, this suggests that simulated gambling may influence actual gambling expenditure particularly amongst those already vulnerable to or affected by gambling problems.

Social network gaming, which refers to playing games that are connected to social networking services (SNS) directly, or through mobile applications (apps), is a popular online activity. Social network games (SNG) are generally free-to-play and do not award monetary prizes, but users can make in-game purchases to advance within the game, customize the game, give gifts to friends, and access other exclusive benefits and features, leading to these games being referred to as ‘freemium’.

Although SNG are connected to an SNS and encourage users to interact with their connections, most SNG can be played without any social interaction. SNG has grown rapidly in popularity and the global SNG market is predicted to grow annually at 16% from 2013-2019 to reach a total market value of US$17.4 billion (Transparency Market Research, 2015).

A survey of Facebook users in Australia in November 2012 reported that there are over 3.5 million social gamers across Australia and almost 70% play SNG daily (Spiral Media, 2013), and it is highly likely that the use of SNG has increased since this time. One of the most popular and profitable SNG genres is games that simulate casino or other gambling (or betting) activities. Such games are referred to as social casino games.

These games generally appear to replicate the basic structural design of gambling activities (i.e., betting mechanics, chance-determined outcomes), but are free to play and the prizes awarded are generally virtual currency that has no value outside of the game.

Thus, while they resemble gambling activities, they are not legally classified or regulated according this category. Gambling and gaming market convergence The proportion of SNG users who become paying customers is generally small, with estimates suggesting that only 2.3% of all users made in-app purchases with real money.

Despite the small proportion of paying users, the massive number of users means that the global social casino market generated an estimated US$2.8 billion in revenue in 2014, a 37% increase from 2013 and revenue was expected to reach US$3.4 billion in 2015.

Not surprisingly, the high profitability of the social casino market has attracted international interest, most notably from gambling operators who have, through partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions, now become the dominant players in the social casino market.

For example, Playtika, owned by Caesars Interactive Entertainment, a subsidiary of Caesars Entertainment Corporation, the world’s largest gambling company, was estimated to account for 22% of the entire social casino game market, whereas DoubleDown Casino, owned by gaming machine manufacturer IGT, accounted for 11%.

An increasing number of land-based gambling venues are also now offering social casino games, often linked with player loyalty programs, for marketing and customer engagement purposes.

However, despite apparent convergence between the gaming and gambling markets, several online gambling operators that have established online gambling on social casino games or directly on SNS have ceased these operations. The lack of success of these online gambling operations may indicate that the cross-over between the gambling and gaming markets does not necessarily translate to being able to ‘migrate’ social casino game users to a gambling product.

To date, little research has examined the convergence between gambling and gaming, although early evidence provides some grounds to justify more detailed investigations.

For example, correlational studies show that young people who play gambling-themed games, including social casino games, are more likely to also engage in gambling and experience gambling problems. A study of 2,010 Australian adult gamblers found that 13% also played social casino games, and these were more likely to be younger respondents, males and Australian born.

They were also more likely to gamble online and be involved in all forms of gambling assessed, as well as smoke daily, use illicit drugs, experience gambling problems and have higher psychological distress.

A survey of US social casino game users found that over one-third (36%) of participants visited a land-based casino more than twice a year, and two-thirds (68%) were interested in gambling on their favorite social casino game.

Similarly, a survey of online gamblers found that more frequent participation in social casino games was associated with greater gambling involvement. These results suggest some cross-over between the social casino game and gambling markets.

In one longitudinal study, 409 US social casino gamers who had never gambled online were surveyed at two time-points.

About one-quarter of the sample of social casino gamers reported having migrated to online gambling over the six-month period and making microtransactions (payments) was the only unique statistical predictor of migration from social casino gaming to online gambling.

Theoretical links between gambling and gaming

The increasing convergence of the gambling and gaming industries has raised some concerns about whether social casino games might pose risks to certain groups in the community. One of the theorized consequences of gambling-themed games is the normalization of gambling behaviors.

If people play social casino games they may be more likely to view gambling as an acceptable everyday activity and develop favorable attitudes to gambling, transferred from their positive experiences with the games. One hypothesis is that social casino games may represent a gateway product that could precede gambling.

At present, however, evidence in support of migration from social casino games to gambling remains very limited. The notion of migration is complex and could involve transfers from social casino gaming to gambling activities while still remaining with the same operator, or it could refer to transfers to other available gambling activities.

This may include users who have not previously gambled, as well as existing gamblers for whom the games triggered engagement in discrete or ongoing gambling sessions. In this way, the term migration connotes the possibility that users may engage in social casino games, while also expanding their online activities to include gambling.

Apart from their shared commercial connections, another reason why social casino game users may migrate to gambling is that the activities have many characteristics in common, particularly in relation to structural design. However, unlike gambling products, social casino games may not involve randomly determined outcomes and there is no transparency about how outcomes are determined.

Conceivably, it is possible for social casino games to use algorithms that produce different outcomes in response to user behaviors to encourage continued play and in-game purchases.

Without the same regulatory oversight of game mechanics as in gambling, it is possible that social casino games may encourage misplaced confidence in users that they will be successful at gambling if they perceive the two experiences as highly similar.

Engaging in SNG may also encourage financial risk-taking, based on research that shows that online environments produce greater disinhibition and risk-taking and the establishment of online social interactions that might encourage financial risk-taking to appear courageous and skillful compared to other users.

It is possible that individuals who play social casino games are already interested in gambling. Given a demonstrated interest in gambling themes, social casino game users may be targeted with advertisements and promotional offers from gambling sites or directly encouraged to migrate to a gambling site based on their use of social casino games.

These issues were examined in a qualitative study with social casino gamers. Some participants reported that playing social casino games may lead to gambling because the similarity between the two activities may encourage user familiarity and transition in the hope of winning prizes of value. Other participants reported clearly understanding the differences between social casino games and gambling, and that if they were going to play games for money, they may as well gamble.

For some users with gambling problems, social casino games acted as a trigger and exacerbated gambling, and at least one participant attributed their gambling and associated problems to earlier social casino gaming experiences. Thus, a variety of effects may occur but limited research has quantified them or determined any differential effects on sub-populations.

The aim of this paper was to examine the relationship between social casino gaming and gambling. Australian adults have access to Internet gaming and gambling in multiple forms, including online gambling and were chosen as an appropriate population to examine the impact of social casino games on gambling.

The principal research question was whether social casino games influenced users directly to gamble or whether social casino games increase gambling (Rq1), and to investigate the demographic and playing patterns that characterized these affected social casino game users (Rq2). We hypothesized that, for the majority of users, social casino games would have little to no impact on their gambling, but that for a subset of users social casino games would lead to increase gambling and some users would gamble as a direct result of these games (Hp1).

A second hypothesis was that migration to or increased gambling as a result of social casino games would be motivated by a desire to make money and a belief that their experience with social casino games had increased their likelihood of winning when gambling (Hp2).

How Do Slot Machines and Other Electronic Gambling Machines Actually Work?

Online Slot Machines

Slot machines and other Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs) are gambling devices that offer a variety of games.

They are inexpensive to run, which makes it possible for casinos to offer low-stakes betting to a large number of players. As a result, they have become the most profitable form of gambling. EGMs are found at casinos, online casinos, on cruise boats, at racetracks, at local bars, and even at corner stores.

Slot machines and other EGMs seem to attract a lot of myths. This is partly because of a lack of accurate information on how the machines work and partly due to the design of the machines. In this article, we will discuss how slot machines really work.

Our goal is to demystify the machines in order to demystify the games. We will also discuss some of the myths about slot machines. This article is intended to serve as a resource for counselors and prevention workers in the field of problem gambling. It is also intended for people in the general public who wish to understand slot machines.

Slot machines and other electronic gambling machines (EGMs) are gambling devices that offer a variety of games. EGMs are found at casinos, online casinos, on cruise boats, at racetracks, and, in some provinces and states, in local bars and corner stores.

There are three main varieties of EGMs: slot machines, video slots, and video poker. These machines are inexpensive to run compared to roulette or blackjack games, which makes it possible for casinos to offer low-stakes betting to a large number of players. As a result, they have become the most profitable form of gambling for casinos and online casinos operators.

A recent report from Statistics Canada indicates that EGMs outside of casinos (e.g., Video Lottery Terminals –VLTs- in bars and slot machines at racetracks) took in a total of 40% of the total revenue from non-charity gambling in Canada. In addition, slots accounted for 80% of the revenue from casinos in 2024. The purpose of this article is to examine how EGMs work and to address some of the most common misunderstandings about these machines.

For the most part, very little accurate information is available from the gambling industry on how EGMs work. However, even it falls well short of full disclosure about the machines. Information is available from numerous “How to Gamble” books, videos, and Web sites. While some of these are remarkably accurate, others are filled with misinformation about gambling.

It is difficult for the consumer to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate information. In the absence of easily accessible and accurate information, people tend to create their own beliefs about how things work. When these ideas are shared, they take on a life of their own as myths. Eventually, these myths are written down in “how-to” books or Web sites. Once written, the myths seem to become fact. EGMs seem to attract a lot of these myths.

The mythification of slots may be due to the way the machines are designed. Mythification may be the basis of many of the great works of literature, but, in the case of gambling, it is the source of much misery. In this article, we will explain how slot machines really work, and we will discuss and debunk some of the related myths.

Slot Machines

The basic game of a slot machine involves setting three or more reels into motion. In many modern offline and online slot machines, the reels are simply computer-generated pictures of simulated reels, but the essential game is the same. Typically, if all three reels match when they stop moving, the player wins, but other combinations can also lead to a prize (e.g., one cherry).

Common symbols include lemons, cherries, lucky sevens, diamonds, etc. The amount of the win is inversely related to the probability of a symbol coming up on the pay line.

However, there is very little relationship between the number of pictures on the reel and the probability of a particular symbol landing on the pay line. The wins and the player’s remaining credits are displayed using a small LED screen (a matrix of little red dots) and in online slots, it will be on screen.

In bricks and mortar casinos, if the player has won more than the machine can payout, a light on top of the machine usually flashes, notifying the casino of a big win. The remainder of the win is paid by cheque.

The payout of the slot is determined by the mathematical structure of the game, not by how recently the machine has paid out. Game structures are very complex and, as a result, the odds against winning on most EGMs are hidden from the player.

In Ontario, most offline slot machines have actual reels. However, some casinos have video slots (also called VLTs) with simulated reels that appear on a video screen. The introduction of video slots allows the game manufacturer a much greater degree of freedom in the structure of the game. Many video slots have bonus features that come up if certain combinations occur.

Bonus features are not new. Reel slots have always had bonus features run either by a separate wheel or oversized dice located at the top of the machine or through a separate display screen that is activated when a bonus feature occurs. The advantage of video slots, however, is that upgrading the program or replacing it with a new game is easier. In my view, slot lineup games presented on a video screen and slots with reels are essentially the same, except that video slots offer a greater variety of wagers and bonus features.

Video poker

Video poker is a completely different game than slots. It is based on five-card-draw poker played against the machine. Players win if they get certain combinations of cards, such as three of a kind (e.g., 4-4-K-4-7) or a flush (e.g., five hearts).

Players press a deal button, select the cards they want to keep by pressing a hold button, and then press deal to replace the rest of the cards. Typically, players only get one draw per hand. Some versions include wildcards (e.g., the joker or deuce), which are worth any value needed to complete a hand. The computer calculates the highest hand present and pays credits that are inversely related to the odds of a particular hand coming up. A flush might pay five credits for every credit bet while a full house might pay eight.

Video poker is different from slots in two main respects. First, the probabilities of the game are based on a simulated deck of cards, so that players can actually compute the probability of winning based on their knowledge of the cards.

For example, if you have four hearts and one spade, you can estimate that the chance of getting a flush if you replace the spade is 19% (9/47).

Second, you have an option to choose which card to hold, which means that there is an element of skill in the game. For example, with Jacks or Better video poker, say a player has a pair of tens, but also has a flush draw (e.g., four hearts). Taking into account the probability and payout for various hands, the player would be better off throwing away the ten and drawing for a flush than throwing away the three hearts to draw for two pairs or three of a kind.

However, if the player has a pair of jacks, he or she is better off keeping the jacks and throwing away the flush draw.

While some of the rules of play seem self-evident, optimal play actually involves memorizing a fairly large number of conditional rules. Thus, players who study the game and make probability-based choices can improve their success.

However, skill in video poker does not usually allow players to overcome the house edge. Skilled players might lose at a rate of 1% per bet, whereas less skilled players might lose at a rate of perhaps 10% per bet. Exact figures for skilled and unskilled would depend on a player’s level of skill and the particular machine played.

Note that there are apparently video poker games where an optimal strategy would allow the player to break even or even beat the house. Evaluating the accuracy of this claim is beyond the scope of this article. However, on most video poker machines, even expert players are playing against a house edge.

Video lottery machines

There is a great deal of confusion about the nature of VLTs. People often use the term VLT when referring to video poker or video slots located in a casino.

There are four main differences between a VLT and a video slot machine.

First, in some jurisdictions, the outcome of the games on a VLT is determined by a central determination system rather than the individual machine. This is in fact why they are called video lottery “terminals.” This distinction might have important legal implications in terms of whether a VLT is classed as a slot machine or a lottery, but is irrelevant in terms of the gambler’s experience.

Second, VLTs in Canada are often multi-game platforms that offer slot games, video poker, and sometimes a variety of other games such as video blackjack or keno. The range of games offered means that VLTs may appeal to a broader range of players than single-game slot machines. Slot games played on a VLT are largely the same as video slots on a stand-alone machine. Video poker on a VLT is essentially the same as video poker on a dedicated video poker machine. As described above, slot lineup games and video poker are quite different. One is a game of pure chance, the other a game with some skill elements. When discussing machine gambling with a player, it may be important to know the type of game played. Telling a VLT player who only plays video poker on the VLT that the game involves no skill could interfere with therapy by undermining the credibility of the counselor (the focus with video poker should be on the limits of skill).

Third, VLTs are often located in bars and corner stores — areas that are more easily accessible. Single-game machines (slots or video poker) make up the majority of machines offered in casinos in Canada, but multigame platforms can be found in Las Vegas casinos. The multigame nature of VLTs is likely due to the pragmatic need to offer a variety of games in a setting with only a small number of machines.

Fourth, wins from VLTs in Canada are usually paid with vouchers, whereas slot wins are paid with coins. However, both accumulate credits until a “cash-out” button is pressed.

Global variations

Gambling is a multinational industry that is regulated locally. As a result, there are regional variations in the games that are available and the regulations that control them. Fruit machines in the United Kingdom, for example, are required by law to pay out a minimum percentage within a short period of time.

Apparently this regulation came into effect because the bar owners responsible for these machines were worried about potential losses due to the volatility of games. According to U.S. patent #6,666,765 (http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html):

[British] fruit machines generally use a form of “adaptive logic” wherein coin-in and coin-out is monitored over time and wherein odds/payouts of the fruit machine are proactively adjusted to achieve a target win percentage. Examples of adaptive logic fruit-machines in Great Britain are GB 2 185 612 A and GB 2 087 618 A …. In the United States, the casino game operated with a random number generator must, overall play of the casino game, provide a known player expected return (or house advantage) and the casino game cannot proactively monitor performance and correspondingly adjust play parameters.

As a result, some of the myths about slot machines in North America may, in fact, be true in the United Kingdom, however, recently told us that adaptive logic machines are being phased out as the United Kingdom moves toward adopting North American standards in order to permit larger prizes.