Responsible Gambling

Seeking to reduce problems from pathological gambling, the Bureau of Gambling Control is working with cardrooms and others to encourage Responsible Gambling Programs.

California also operates a state Office of Problem Gambling to promote public awareness and assist victims and their families. The Bureau of Gambling Control is coordinating with the Office of Problem Gambling to ensure that state programs take into account, as much as practicable, problem and pathological gamblers as required by state law Welfare and Institutions Code section 4369 et. seq.

If identified, pathological gambling is a treatable mental disorder. By fostering responsible gambling policies and programs within gambling establishments/facilities and developing government-industry initiatives, the impact of problem gambling could be greatly reduced in California.

Gambling Disorders

The beliefs of a society about a health condition can have a huge impact on the people who suffer from the disorder. Public opinion can influence public health policy, public and private harm minimization efforts, research funds and treatment support. At the individual level, negative public views of a disease and the stigma it creates can strongly discourage individuals from admitting that he or she has the problem and seeking treatment for the condition. There is little data available on public opinion of gambling disorders; however, a new study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies fills this void with a systematic examination of public opinion on gambling disorders.

Researchers conducted telephone surveys with 8,467 adults in the Toronto area and questioned people about their opinions of how to best understand gambling disorders. Researchers asked if gambling disorders should be treated as a disease or illness, a wrongdoing, a habit, not disease or an addiction similar to drug addiction. Researchers also inquired if people with gambling disorders can get well on their own or must seek treatment to improve and polled adults on whether people with gambling disorders can reduce their gambling to that of a social gambler or if they need to quit altogether. The survey also gathered information on the gambling behavior and demographics of the respondents.

The researchers found that most people viewed gambling disorders as an addiction similar to drug addiction, with one-third seeing gambling as a habit and 17 percent viewing gambling as a form of wrongdoing. Responses to whether gamblers needed treatment to recover showed a split jury, and three out of four thought that abstinence from gambling activities must happen for recovery. Examining the demographics, the researchers found that being female, married, younger and without gambling problems paralleled believing that treatment and abstinence were necessary. In addition, people who viewed gambling problems as a disease or addiction also believed that treatment and abstinence for recovery are necessary.

The researchers noted that public perceptions reported in their study mimic the results of a 2003 study that examined the views of the public on alcohol use, with 71 percent of respondents saying that abstinence must occur for recovery. This popularly held belief is also the view of much of the scientific community as reflected by the upcoming changes the American Psychiatric Association is making.

Finally, researchers concluded that people with gambling disorders were less likely to think that treatment and abstinence were necessary for recovery. This may be because many people who meet the clinical guidelines for a gambling disorder do not think they have a problem and even those who believe they do have a problem are unlikely to seek treatment.

Poker Tournament

A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table called a "heads-up" tournament, and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tables. The winner of the tournament is usually the person who wins every poker chip in the game and the others are awarded places based on the time of their elimination. To facilitate this, in most tournaments, blinds rise over the duration of the tournament. Unlike in a ring game or cash game, a player's chips in a tournament cannot be cashed out for money and serve only to determine the player's placing.

To enter a typical tournament, a player pays a fixed buy-in and at the start of play is given a certain quantity of tournament poker chips. Commercial venues may also charge a separate fee, or withhold a small portion of the buy-in, as the cost of running the event. Tournament chips have only notional value; they have no cash value, and only the tournament chips, not cash, may be used during play. Typically, the amount of each entrant's starting tournament chips is an integer multiple of the buy-in. Some tournaments offer the option of a re-buy or buy-back; this gives players the option of purchasing more chips. In some cases, re-buys are conditional for example, offered only to players low on or out of chips but in others they are available to all players called add-ons. When a player has no chips remaining and has exhausted or declined all re-buy options, if any are available he or she is eliminated from the tournament.

In most tournaments, the number of players at each table is kept even by moving players, either by switching one player or as the field shrinks taking an entire table out of play and distributing its players amongst the remaining tables. A few tournaments, called shoot-outs, do not do this; instead, the last player sometimes the last two or more players at a table moves on to a second or third round, akin to a single-elimination tournament found in other games.