trends life, luxury & the pursuit of happiness
LIQUID ASSETS
Imbibing and Bet-Sizing Anyone who drives faster when the car speakers blast Radar Love should know how alcohol affects the decision to take risks By Kendall Polidori
W
hether it’s Mark Wahlberg knocking back a drink before he goes all-in at the poker table in The Gambler or Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn clinking glasses while betting on a horse race in Mississippi Grind, alcohol and gambling go hand-in-hand—or at least that’s how it’s portrayed in movies and other media. But does alcohol change the way players behave in a game of chance? To find out, researchers study how alcohol consumption influences gamblers’ decision-making and risk-taking. In a 2019 study at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Gambling Research, scientists found that participants who were under the influence of alcohol placed higher bets following losses compared with the bets they placed after wins. That’s called loss chasing and it’s “one of the hallmarks of problematic gambling,” said Luke Clark, director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC and senior author of the study. The experiment included male student participants, who often show higher levels of risk-taking and higher rates of problem gambling than female students, Clark noted in an interview with Luckbox. The particLoss Chasing: Gamblers who are losing tend to place higher bets than when they’re winning. Alcohol doesn’t aid that decision-making process.
August/September 2021 | Luckbox
2108-trends-opener.indd 35
35
7/21/21 9:35 AM
