connecticut gambling – NBC Connecticut nbcconnecticut.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nbcconnecticut.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Problem Gamblers Can Exclude Themselves From New Online Gaming Options nbcconnecticut.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nbcconnecticut.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Mark Pazniokas / CT Mirror
SPRINGFIELD Late-afternoon gamblers strolling past the baccarat table ignored its sole player, a brooding dark-haired man whose gaze rarely left the table. He wore a white N95 mask, purple nitrile gloves and a lightweight hoodie the color of his chips, a bluish gray.
On her rounds at MGM Springfield, Amy Gabrila noticed him right away. The golden RESERVED placard on the table marked him as a high roller, as did the color and quantity of his chips. Grays are the color of money in Massachusetts casinos, each worth $5,000.
“He’s got about $210,000 in chips in front of him,” said Gabrila, a former casino dealer. She spoke in the low voice of a golf commentator.
Ease and accessibility.
That’s what people who deal with problem gambling fear most about the advent of online gaming, be it online sports betting, online casino games, ilottery or ikeno, all of which Connecticut lawmakers could approve before the current legislative session wraps up in June.
What can happen when gambling involves little more than tapping a mobile phone?
In New Jersey, which embraced online gaming in 2013, professor Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at the Rutgers School of Social Work, led a study several years later that found that 6.3% of the state’s residents had a gambling disorder three times the national average of 2.1%.