casino tricks

many people are already familiar with some of the psychological tricks casinos use to get more of their money, such as not having clocks and super-oxygenating the air. in turn, motley fool has some good tips for curbing those negative gambling habits, however encouraged, both at the poker table and elsewhere.

it's interesting, then, that more casinos haven't gone smoke-free in their effort to get people to stick around. no-smoke.org lists only a handful of non-smoking casinos and (snicker) bingo parlors (PDF).

i suppose this suggests evidence for the point that smoke doesn't significantly effect consumer decisions, as las vegas has probably invested plenty of research into what does. one must ask: if the public does prefer smokeless casinos , why don't they demand them? i'm sure there are many reasons. my inner statistician (demographer?) suggests (as i'm sure many others have done) that the gambling subpopulation's preferences differ substantially from the aggregate population's. folks bothered by smoke may be the minority in gambling groups but the majority in the general population. this may make sense because of general gambling culture and because gambling folks probably have higher incidence of risk-taking & addictive personalities. yet on top of paternalistic concerns, the aggregate population can probably imagine going to a casino so still have a self-interest in regulating the smoke-free casino game.

update: on a similar note, "brothels ask exemption from smoking ban"

Labels: decision making, political