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Between-session chasing of losses and wins in an online eCasino

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 Between-session chasing of losses and wins in an online eCasino

Ke Zhang1, Jason Rights2, Xiaolei Deng1, Tilman Lesch1, Luke Clark1,3

1
Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, Department of Psychology, University of British

Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

2
The Rights Lab, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver,

B.C., Canada

3
Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver,

B.C., Canada

Publication status: This is a manuscript not yet submitted for publication.

Draft date: 2023 May 20

APA Citation: Zhang, K., Rights, J., Deng, X., Lesch, T., & Clark, L. (2023, May 24).

Between-session chasing of losses and wins in an online eCasino. Retrieved from

osf.io/v87yk.

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Funding: The Centre for Gambling Research at UBC is supported by the Province of British

Columbia government and the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC; a Canadian

Crown Corporation). LC holds a Discovery Award from the Natural Sciences and

Engineering Research Council (Canada). KZ held the Graduate Fellowship in Gambling

Research, a fellowship supported by the BCLC and adjudicated by the UBC Faculty of Arts.

Declaration of Interests: KZ held the Graduate Fellowship in Gambling Research (2021-

2022), a fellowship supported by the BCLC and adjudicated by the UBC Faculty of Arts.

LC is the Director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, which is supported by

funding from the Province of British Columbia and the BCLC. The Province of BC

government and the BCLC had no role in the preparation of this manuscript, and impose no

constraints on publishing. LC has received a speaker/travel honorarium from the International

Center for Responsible Gaming (US) and Scientific Affairs (Germany), and has received fees

for academic services from the International Center for Responsible Gaming (US),

GambleAware (UK) and Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (Canada). LC has received

royalties from Cambridge Cognition Ltd. relating to neurocognitive testing. KZ and LC have

not received any further direct or indirect payments from the gambling industry or groups

substantially funded by gambling. The remaining authors declares no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements and Data Sharing Statement:

The dataset for this study was provided to the researchers by the BCLC, under a Non-

Disclosure Agreement that prohibits further data sharing. We would like to thank the Social

Responsibility and Data Analytics teams at BCLC for their willingness to share the data, and

technical support to de-identify and transfer the data.

2
For correspondence: Luke Clark email luke.clark@psych.ubc.ca; Ke Zhang email

kezhang0904@gmail.com

3
 Abstract

Continued gambling despite negative consequences, commonly known as ‘chasing’, is a

defining feature of disordered gambling. Yet chasing is also a complex and multi-faceted

behavioural phenotype; for example, gamblers may chase winning outcomes as well as

losses. This study characterized between-session chasing behavior in a large naturalistic

dataset of online gambling data, comprising 1,909,681 eCasino sessions played by 15,544

individuals on PlayNow.com, the provincial online gambling platform in British Columbia,

Canada. Analyses distinguished sessions on slot machines (as the reference category),

blackjack, roulette, video poker, probability games, or mixed sessions. Overall, gamblers

returned more slowly after losing sessions, and more quickly after winning sessions, across

most product categories. For every standard deviation increase in the prior session net loss,

slot machine gamblers took 8.59% longer to return to the website (b = 0.08, p < .001). For

every standard deviation increase in the prior session net win, slot machine gamblers returned

6.68% faster (b = -0.07, p < .001). Loss chasing intensities in blackjack, probability, video

poker, and mixed sessions did not differ significantly from slot machine sessions, but roulette

was associated with a shorter interval to return (b = -0.13, p < .001). Similarly, win chasing

intensities across blackjack, probability games, and video poker did not differ significantly

from slot machine sessions, but roulette (b = -0.08, p < .001) and mixed (b = -0.02, p = 0.009)

sessions were associated with shorter intervals to return. Average behavioural patterns

provide limited evidence for loss chasing in the interval between sessions, but gamblers

return faster after larger wins. Although slot machines are commonly considered as high-risk

gambling products, in our analyses online roulette was associated with the greatest chasing

intensities.

Keywords: chasing, online casino, gambling games, behavioural marker, addiction

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1.1 Introduction

Chasing is widely considered one of the hallmarks of disordered gambling (Lesieur,

1979; Zhang & Clark, 2020). Broadly speaking, it refers to the persistence or escalation of

betting in an effort to recover the gambler’s debts. From this perspective, chasing is

conventionally seen as a response to losing (i.e. loss chasing), although it is well-recognized

that gamblers may also chase in response to winning outcomes (O’Connor & Dickerson,

2003). In the DSM-5, the chasing item specifically refers to a gambler who "often returns

another day to get even" (section 312.31; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Indeed,

this ‘between-session chasing’ is the most frequently endorsed item among the nine DSM

items for gambling disorder (Sleczka & Romild, 2021; Toce‐Gerstein et al., 2003). The

primary aim of the present study was to characterize between-session chasing tendencies in a

large ‘behavioural tracking’ dataset of online gamblers, examining the time interval between

consecutive sessions as a function of the amounts lost and won. In light of the close links

between chasing and gambling problems, the study also aimed to compare chasing intensities

across gambling product types, to derive insight into the potential risks associated with

different forms of gambling.

Most research on chasing to date used retrospective surveys (Gainsbury, 2014;

Lesieur, 1979; O’Connor & Dickerson, 2003; Sleczka & Romild, 2021; Temcheff et al.,

2016). For example, Temcheff et al., (2016) surveyed 8,674 college athletes. Among women,

a chasing item was the only item that distinguished those with and without gambling

problems, while three other items were better differentiators among men. A Swedish

longitudinal survey also highlighted that the endorsement of chasing behaviour is a stable

predictor of the risk of transitioning to more severe gambling problems over a 5 year period

(Sleczka & Romild, 2021). Survey data, while valuable, are reliant upon self-report, with

well-established biases (Braverman et al., 2014). A small number of studies have examined

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chasing using field data from (land-based) casinos (e.g., Flepp et al., 2021; Forrest &

McHale, 2016; Kainulainen, 2020; Narayanan & Manchanda, 2012; Wardle et al., 2014,

2014). Measuring the time interval between visits as an index of chasing, these studies found

that gamblers took longer to return after a losing session, and time interval increased as a

function of the amount lost (Forrest & McHale, 2016; Kainulainen, 2020; Narayanan &

Manchanda, 2012). Conversely, gamblers returned more quickly (i.e. chased) after a winning

session. Chasing might also be expressed as increasing the overall bet amount over

successive visits. Tracking slot machine engagement in a Swiss casino, a small loss (i.e.,

below the median loss of USD 188) did not change the subsequent bet amount, whereas a

larger loss (i.e., exceeding the median loss amount) reduced the subsequent bet amount

(Flepp et al., 2021). Thus, the aggregate profile in land-based gambling indicates win

chasing, but not loss chasing.

With the expansion of online gambling availability over the past decade, the present

study sought to capture between-session chasing in the online environment. We used a

dataset from the eCasino section of PlayNow.com, the provincial gambling platform in

British Columbia, Canada. Across many jurisdictions, people who gamble online are often

younger, more likely to be male, and come from more affluent socioeconomic backgrounds

than land-based gamblers (e.g., those who frequent local casinos, Gainsbury et al., 2012;

Gainsbury et al., 2015). Online gamblers also have a greater risk of disordered gambling than

land-based gamblers (e.g., Papineau et al., 2018), and in the most recent provincial data for

BC, 24% of online gamblers were classified at high-risk for gambling problems on the

Problem Gambling Severity Index (Ipsos, 2020). Compared to behavioural tracking in land-

based casinos, the online environment presents a more direct means of linking gamblers’ (de-

identified) accounts with their gambling behaviour (Deng et al., 2019). For example, from the

timestamps on each gambling decision, we can aggregate data into sessions of gambling and

6
then operationalize between-session chasing as the time interval between successive visits to

the website.

A further objective was to examine differences between gambling product types. Past

behavioural tracking studies have rarely distinguished game type in analyses of chasing

(Forrest & McHale, 2016; Wardle et al., 2014). Some studies have focussed on single games

(Flepp et al., 2021; Kainulainen, 2020; Narayanan & Manchanda, 2012), such that it is

unclear how observed patterns would generalise to other games. Different forms of gambling

vary in their structural characteristics (Griffiths, 1993), in ways that are likely to influence

chasing and the potential for disordered gambling. For example, it is well recognized that slot

machines have a range of features including a fast and continuous speed of play, and intense

audiovisual stimulation, which may foster psychological states of immersion (Dixon et al.,

2014, 2018; Dowling et al., 2017; Murch & Clark, 2021). In a survey study, slot machine

gamblers were more likely to "keep playing to try to win back their losses", compared to

gamblers on other products including roulette and blackjack (Gainsbury et al., 2014). The

present study aimed to systematically characterize between-session chasing tendencies across

five game types: slot machines, blackjack, roulette, video poker, and probability games (e.g.,

pachinko, reactors). Slot machines were the most popular game type in our data, representing

57% of sessions, and given that our predictions for slot machines were also best informed by

prior research, slot machines were used as the reference category for the analyses by product

type. We hypothesized that among online gamblers, the time interval between sessions would

decrease as a function of the amount lost in the prior session (H1: loss chasing), and would

decrease as a function of the amount won in the prior session (H2: win chasing). In our

predictions for the effects of game type, we hypothesized that slot machine sessions would be

associated with the shortest between-session intervals, as a function of the amount lost (H3:

7
loss chasing by game type) and amount won (H4: win chasing by game type) in the prior

session.

1.2 Methods

1.2.1 BCLC Data Overview

The study used a behavioural tracking dataset obtained from PlayNow.com, the online

gambling website operated by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC). This

platform is restricted to BC residents. The website requires customers to create a user

account, which allows the website to track individual users over time, and generates a

detailed, time-stamped records of bet-by-bet data. The dataset was de-identified by the BCLC

Data Analytics team by randomly assigning each gambler a unique ID. The University of

British Columbia’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board gave ethical approval to store and

analyse this secondary dataset for research purposes. The dataset spans from 2014-10-01 to

2015-08-31, comprising 527,015,222 individual bets placed by 29,964 unique gamblers, in

the ‘eCasino’ section of PlayNow.com. During the time period under scrutiny, the eCasino

contained 244 individual games classified into five main product categories: slot machines,

roulette, blackjack, video poker, probability games.

We began by aggregating the bet-by-bet data into gambling sessions. We define a

session as starting when the gambler logs on to the website and initiates betting, and ends

when the gambler logs off from the website or when the gambler is inactive for 30 minutes

(in which case they are logged off automatically). This time window is one session. During a

session, gamblers can play one game type (79% of sessions), or place bets across multiple

product categories; we refer to the latter as “mixed” sessions (21% of sessions). Thus, the

aggregated session data comprised six categories: slot machines, roulette, blackjack, video

poker, probability games, and mixed sessions. Slot machines were the most popular product

type in the eCasino (57% of sessions, see Table 1).

8
 To be included in the between-session chasing analysis, we selected users who visited

the eCasino more than five times during the 11-month data window. This represents an

arbitrary threshold (although see Finkenwirth et al., 2021; Percy et al., 2016), but between-

session chasing analyses inherently requires more than one session. We excluded a further

gambler who was an outlier in terms of high bet frequency. This resulted in an analytical

sample of 1,909,681 sessions from 15,544 gamblers.

1.3 Data Analysis

1.3.1 Variables

The analysis aimed to measure how prior session outcomes impact the time to return

to the online gambling platform. The time interval (Time to Return, in hours) between the end

of the prior session and the start of the next session is the main dependent variable. We

applied a natural log transform on the Time to Return because of its positive skewed nature in

distribution, with most gamblers returned in modest time intervals, but some gamblers

returned to the eCasino after extremely long intervals. A faster time to return reflects a

greater chasing tendency.

The key predictors were:

• Game: the six product categories comprised slot machines, probability games,

blackjack, video poker, roulette, and mixed sessions.

• Outcome Dummy: because the net outcome can be a win or a loss, which might lead

to differential chasing patterns, we created a dummy variable to indicate the valence.

A negative net balance refers to a net loss. A positive net balance, which also includes

zeros as ‘break-even’ sessions, refers to a net win. We reparametrized the model in

two ways to interpret both loss chasing and win chasing tendencies. We used loss as

reference Outcome Dummy (loss = 0, win = 1) to interpret loss chasing tendency, and

9
 we used win as reference Outcome Dummy (win = 0, loss = 1) to interpret win

chasing tendency.

• Outcome: the net outcome of the prior session. The net outcome is the total paid

amount minus the winning amount. The values were squared and then square rooted

to obtain exclusively positive values for analysis (see also Leino et al, 2016).

Outcome values were standardized with respect to individual gamblers’ mean of loss

or win amounts; depending on Outcome Dummy, a value of zero indicates an average

loss (or win) amount for that gambler over the 11-month data. This standardized

within person method versus standardized across persons is more in line with our

research interest: how individual gamblers reacted to the prior outcome changes if

they won or lost more than their personal average.

In addition to the effects of interest (prior outcome, game type), we covaried for other

time-related nuisance variables that could impact when gamblers start a new session:

• Session Order: the order of the current session in any given day (e.g., 2014-10-21

00:00AM – 11:59PM). This variable was (natural) log-transformed, which indicated

that a larger session order (i.e. more frequent return) predicated an increasingly small

reducing in the time interval to return. Because given the fixed time window in a day,

the more frequent the gamblers returned, the less time was left for the returning

sessions in the given day, hence if the gamblers were to return, they returned

exponentially faster in the later sessions. Additionally, we also tested other models

with linear Session Order or quadratic Session Order, but the model with Log(Session

Order) gave the best model fit by BIC, hence our choice of using Log(Session Order)

was further validated.

10
 • Start hour: we anchored time of the day by the session’s start time and classify it into

the following periods: morning (12:00 AM – 8:59 AM), early daytime (9:00 AM – 2

PM), late daytime (3 PM – 6 PM), night (7:00 PM – 11:59 PM).

• Weekends: a dummy variable indicating whether the session occurred on a weekday

(reference - No) or a weekend (Yes).

• BC statutory holidays: a dummy variable indicating whether the session occurred on a

holiday (Yes) or not (reference - No).

1.3.2 Analysis

We used R (Version 4.1.1; R Core Team, 2021) and Python (Version 3.6) for all

analyses. For each session, there is information on the time to return, the outcome, the game

types, session order, and the time-related nuisance variables. This creates a two-level

hierarchical data structure: level 1 contains the sessional variables, which are clustered by

gambler ID at level 2. Since there could be random differences in sessional variables between

gamblers, we used a multilevel linear model to handle the random effect of gamblers’

customer IDs.

To test our hypothesis that prior loss and game impacted the Time to Return to the

website, we specified our model as follows, and for simplicity, the model equation does not

represent all of dummy codes for all the categorical variables with more than 2 categories:

11
𝐿𝑜𝑔$𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑅𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛!"# / =
𝛽$" +
𝛽%" 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) + 𝛽)" 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑦!"(#'%) + 𝛽*" 𝐺𝑎𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) +
𝛽+" 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) ∗ 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑦!"(#'%) +
𝛽," 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) ∗ 𝐺𝑎𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) +
𝛽-" 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑦!"(#'%) ∗ 𝐺𝑎𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) +
𝛽." 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) ∗ 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑦!"(#'%) ∗ 𝐺𝑎𝑚𝑒!"(#'%) +
𝛽/" 𝐵𝐶 ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑦!"(#'%) +
𝛽0" 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟!"(#'%) +
𝛽%$" 𝑊𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑑!"(#'%) +
𝛽%%" 𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝑆𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑂𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟) +
𝑒!"

where 𝑖 indicates session, 𝑗 indicates Gambler ID, 𝑡 indicateds time of the session. For Game

type, online slot machines were set as the reference game (slot machines = 0). At level 2 of

random factors, the model allowed random intercepts and random slope of 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒!"($%&) ∗

𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑦!"($%&) varying by 𝐺𝑎𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝐼𝐷, excluding individual random factors of

𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒!"($%&) and 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑦!"($%&) varying by 𝐺𝑎𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝐼𝐷, and such random

slope allowed the degree of win and loss chasing to differ randomly across persons.

We reparametrized the model in two ways, one with Outcome Dummy set to the

reference category for loss sessions (loss = 0, win = 1), and another set to the reference

category for win sessions (loss = 1, win = 0). We used R (version 4.2.1) and the lme4

package (Bates et al., 2015) for the analysis. In developing our analysis pipeline, we

attempted a generalized linear mixed model with a gamma distribution, but the model failed

to converge due to the complexity. Across all analyses, we use p = 0.01 as the cut-off alpha

level to determine statistical significance, as a more conservative threshold given our large

data size. Log-transforming the dependent variable makes the model estimates are not

intuitive for interpretation, thus we presented the results section with transformed estimated

coefficients using 100 ´ (𝑒 ( − 1), which allowed us to show the impact of the independent

variables on the dependent variable by the percentage of changes.

12
1.4 Results

1.4.1 Descriptive results

For descriptive statistics, we report medians due to the heavy skewness of the data. In

Table 1, we show the average net outcomes, and time to return, for the different product

categories. On average, gamblers lost the most (Median = $-35.04) in mixed sessions. Online

slot machines – as the most played game category - ranked second (Median = $-26.95).

Gamblers lost the least on roulette (Median = $-10.00). In terms of the time to return,

gamblers returned slowest overall after roulette sessions (Median = 144.86 hours) and

returned fastest after probability game sessions (Median = 86.29 hours). The time to return

was intermediate for slot machine sessions (Median = 127.05 hours), which ranked third

place among the six games.

1.4.2 Time to Return as a function of prior session outcome

Figure 1 shows the time to return as a function of the prior session outcome in losing

(Figure 1a, left) and winning (Figure 1b, right) sessions. The x-axis depicts the standardized

loss (win) amount based on the distribution of outcomes for that individual gambler over the

data window. Thus, zero constitutes their personal average loss (win) amount, and a positive

outcome indicates the gambler lost (won) more than their personal average. For the loss

graph, a downward slope would indicate that gamblers return faster as a function of larger

prior net loss, i.e. loss chasing, whereas an upward slope would indicate that gamblers return

slower after larger losses.

After losing the prior session, gamblers returned more slowly across all game

categories, with the single exception of roulette. The model uses slot machines as the

reference category (see Table 3a). For a standard deviation increase in the prior session net

loss, average gamblers playing slot machine sessions were estimated to took 8.59% longer to

return to the platform. Compared to slot machines, blackjack (p = 0.740), probability games

13
(p = 0.157), video poker (p = 0.103) on average did not differ significantly in the loss slopes.

Mixed sessions on average were marginally faster in comparison to slot machine sessions (p

= 0.015), but this was not significant at the conservative threshold. For roulette, average

gamblers were estimated to returned faster overall as a function of the amount lost: a standard

deviation increase in the prior loss were estimated to reduce the time to return to another

roulette session by approximately 4.78%. Compared to slot machine sessions, roulette’s

downward slope was significantly less steeper than slot machine’s upward slope (p < .001),

indicating that gamblers in roulette sessions were less sensitive to the prior loss than gamblers

in slot machine sessions.

For the analyses of win chasing, average gamblers were estimated to returned faster as

a function of the prior amount won across all game categories, thus indicating a propensity

for win chasing (see Figure 1, Table 3b). For a standard deviation increase in the prior win,

average slot machine gamblers were estimated to took 6.68% less time to return. The rates of

win chasing differed by game categories: for mixed sessions and roulette, the slope for win

chasing was on average significantly steeper than for slot machines (mixed, p = 0.009;

roulette, p < .001). For mixed sessions, a one standard deviation increase was associated with

an average 8.23% shorter time to return, and for roulette, an average 13.59% shorter time to

return. Blackjack (p = 0.222), probability (p = 0.324), and video poker (p = 0.012) sessions

on average did not differ significantly from slot machine sessions.

1.5 Discussion

The DSM-5 operationalizes chasing as often returning to the casino another day

(American Psychiatric Association, 2013), termed between-session chasing. As a diagnostic

criterion, it is arguably the only behaviourally-observable item used in the identification of

Gambling Disorder, and it is considered a defining hallmark of problematic gambling

(Gainsbury et al., 2014). By analyzing timestamped behavioral tracking data from a

14
provincial gambling website in BC, Canada, our analyses refine the understanding of

between-session chasing by measuring the time taken for online gamblers to return after

winning or losing sessions, across a number of different gambling products. Our results

showed that gamblers on most game types returned more slowly after losing sessions, and

more quickly after winning sessions. Our findings that gamblers, at least at an aggregate

level, did not typically return faster after losses, but did chase their winning sessions, are

consistent with previous research that measured the interval between sessions for land-based

casinos, betting shops, and online horse-racing games (Forrest & McHale, 2016; Kainulainen,

2020; Narayanan & Manchanda, 2012). In our data, roulette was a notable exception: this

game had the longest intervals between sessions overall, but was the only game to show loss

chasing as a function of the amount lost, as well as significantly steeper slopes (in

comparison to slot machines) for both loss chasing and win chasing as a function of the

previous session’s outcome.

In sharp contrast to loss chasing, win chasing -- defined as a faster time to return as a

function of the previous amount won -- was a consistent pattern across all gambling product

categories. In a previous field study from Swiss land-based casinos, windfall wins also

carried over to impact the amount bet on the subsequent casino visit (Rüdisser et al., 2017).

One possible explanation for these win chasing patterns is the house money effect, which

describes how risk taking can increase because windfall wins are not yet internalized as the

gamblers’ own funds; any loss of such windfalls would not hurt as much as the loss of one’s

personal funds (Peng et al., 2013). As a cognitive explanation, one might expect such effects

to be short-lived; our observations of between-session chasing of wins over the order of days

points to other explanations, in our view. Another possibility is a wealth effect, by which an

increase in personal wealth encourages larger spending in the future (Mehra, 2001). In the

15
context of gambling sessions, prior wins increase financial resources to allow a faster time to

return.

In contrast, we did not observe faster return times after losing sessions for most online

casino games. With increasing loss amounts in the prior session, gamblers took longer to

return to the website, indicating an absence of loss chasing. In the break-even effect,

individuals typically increase risk-taking when losing in an effort to recover their losses, but

this should only occur when the losses are of an extent that can be recovered. Larger,

irrecoverable losses may discourage additional risk-taking (Thaler & Johnson, 1990). In our

data, the time intervals to return did not get faster with increasing amounts lost (except for

roulette, discussed below), and this might be because further risk-seeking did not offer the

potential to break-even. We note that this kind of psychological explanation, based on the

break-even effect, requires significant cognitive processing, to calculate the difference from

one’s reference point (e.g., initial gambling account balance, current account balance, desired

wins; Imas, 2016), and the possible impact of a large win to offset that difference.

Alternatively, longer return times after losing could also be driven by financial constraints:

after significant losses, the gambler may simply lack the financial resources to continue

gambling (i.e. the opposite of the ‘wealth effect’ described above for win chasing). The time

to return may be exogenously imposed by the need for further income (e.g., their next

payday, Dahan, 2019). In future research, these explanations could be disambiguated by

merging gambling data with banking information (Muggleton et al., 2021): for example, if

the longer return times are due to insufficient funds, gamblers may be more likely deposit

funds into their gambling account following pay days, which would be visible in the banking

data.

We examined loss chasing and win chasing tendencies across roulette, blackjack,

probability games, video poker, and mixed sessions, in comparison to slot machine sessions.

16
Slot machines are considered to have among the highest risk potential for any form of

gambling (Meyer et al., 2011), and accordingly, we expected slot machine sessions to be

associated with the shortest times to return. Overall, we found little support for this

hypothesis; times to return did not differ significantly between blackjack, probability, video

poker, and slot machines. Notably, roulette as a gambling product category displayed shorter

time intervals to return compared to slot machines, as a function of both losing and winning

sessions, and roulette was the only game type where time to return decreases as a function of

the prior amount lost. This uniqueness of roulette should be considered in the context of

roulette having the longest overall times to return of any eCasino product category, as well as

the smallest net loss amounts compared to other products (Table 1). These differences may

render roulette gamblers more sensitive to the moderation by outcome, such that each unit of

loss would result in larger change in time to return. In terms of structural characteristics, we

note that these effects pertain to online roulette, and this is a faster game than land-based (i.e.

casino) roulette, and is also accompanied by a higher degree of audiovisual feedback. There

is limited research considering the specific product risks associated with online roulette, or

indeed for any individual categories of online casino products. It is possible that online

gamblers who prefer roulette may display distinct psychological characteristics; for example,

Bonnaire et al., (2009) reported that gamblers of table games, including roulette, showed

lower levels of depression and alexithymia compared to gamblers of slot machines and

racetrack gambling. Our findings for roulette arose from exploratory analyses, and our

predictions were of intensified chasing on slot machines, and so these findings for online

roulette clearly warrant replication. Nevertheless, they do provide evidence for an

overarching hypothesis that chasing tendencies differ across gambling product types, which is

relevant to developing algorithms for detecting high-risk gambling from tracked data (Edson

et al., 2023; Ghaharian et al., 2023).

17
 A number of limitations should be noted. Our dataset derived session aggregates from

fine-grained bet-by-bet data, but dates back to 2014-2015 and the online gambling landscape

has continued to evolve since that time. As with most analyses of behavioural tracking data, it

is possible that customers within our dataset held accounts on other gambling platforms

(Behavioural Insights Team, 2021), and visits to those other websites would not be

represented in our time to return variable. Mitigating this limitation, PlayNow is the only

licensed online gambling website in BC, so would be expected to hold greater market capture

than private operators in other jurisdictions. Third, our analyses focus on time to return as a

specific expression of between-session chasing. We acknowledge that between-session

chasing may alternatively be measured in the bet volume over successive sessions (Auer &

Griffiths, 2022; Flepp et al., 2021) and that a range of further behavioural markers exist to

characterize within-session chasing tendencies (Chen et al., 2022; O’Connor & Dickerson,

2003). We are exploring these alternative expressions in ongoing research, which also

incorporate self-exclusion data (Deng et al., 2021; Finkenwirth et al., 2021) as a marker of

disordered gambling.

18
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Table 1. Descriptive statistics of session data by product type.

Game Gamblers count Session count Session count %

slots 12285 1081499 56.63
mixed 12673 412858 21.62
probability 5870 184933 9.68
blackjack 4420 141796 7.43
video poker 2402 48691 2.55
roulette 1264 39904 2.09
Outcome (Canadian $)
Game Median Mean SD
mixed -35.04 -116.58 874.02
slots -26.95 -97.58 633.69
blackjack -19.96 -104.39 399.74
video poker -17.92 -99.68 642.14
probability -12.10 -43.70 784.11
roulette -10.00 -79.58 355.21
Time to return (Hour)
Game Median Mean SD
roulette 144.86 1111.26 4193.87
blackjack 139.93 913.43 3414.25
slots 127.05 529.91 2081.96
mixed 117.51 524.84 2230.79
video poker 100.26 435.61 2057.99
probability 86.29 407.46 1784.55

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Table 2. Summary of between-session across game types. Note: ✔ ‘ ’ indicates the presence
of chasing under the chasing measurement, and ✖ ‘ ’ indicates the absence of chasing under
the measurement. It should be noted that these symbols do not represent statistically
significant effects and they only represent numerical directions of chasing under each
measurement.

Between-session Chasing
Time to Return
Loss Chasing Win Chasing
slots ✖ ✔
mixed ✖ ✔
roulette ✔ ✔
blackjack ✖ ✔
probability ✖ ✔
video poker ✖ ✔

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Table 3. Between-session chasing regression results, with (a) losses as the reference level, and (b) wins as the reference level.
a: the reference of loss
Term estimate std.error statistic p-value conf.low conf.high
(Intercept) 5.78 0.01 568.55 < .001 5.76 5.80
Outcome 0.08 0.00 24.61 < .001 0.08 0.09
Outcome Dummy – win -0.70 0.00 -198.74 < .001 -0.70 -0.69
Blackjack 0.14 0.01 13.15 < .001 0.12 0.16
Probability -0.14 0.01 -21.90 < .001 -0.15 -0.13
Mixed -0.01 0.00 -2.48 0.013 -0.02 0.00
Roulette 0.31 0.02 19.09 < .001 0.28 0.34
Video poker 0.01 0.01 0.54 0.586 -0.02 0.04
BC holidays – Yes 0.05 0.01 7.27 < .001 0.03 0.06
Early daytime 9am - 2pm -0.08 0.00 -22.45 < .001 -0.09 -0.07
Late daytime 3pm - 6pm 0.03 0.00 7.73 < .001 0.02 0.04
Night 0.53 0.00 140.19 < .001 0.52 0.54
Weekend – Yes 0.05 0.00 18.78 < .001 0.04 0.05
Log(Session count) -0.23 0.00 -93.33 < .001 -0.23 -0.22
Outcome:Outcome Dummy – win -0.15 0.00 -30.51 < .001 -0.16 -0.14
Outcome:Blackjack 0.00 0.01 -0.33 0.74 -0.02 0.01
Outcome:Probability 0.01 0.01 1.42 0.157 0.00 0.02
Outcome:Mixed 0.01 0.00 2.44 0.015 0.00 0.02
Outcome:Roulette -0.13 0.02 -8.41 < .001 -0.16 -0.10
Outcome:Video poker 0.02 0.02 1.63 0.103 -0.01 0.05
Outcome Dummy - win:Blackjack -0.15 0.01 -16.18 < .001 -0.17 -0.14
Outcome Dummy - win:Probability 0.10 0.01 10.58 < .001 0.08 0.12
Outcome Dummy - win:Mixed 0.06 0.01 8.59 < .001 0.04 0.07
Outcome Dummy - win:Roulette -0.29 0.02 -16.55 < .001 -0.33 -0.26
Outcome Dummy - win:Video poker 0.04 0.02 2.69 0.007 0.01 0.07
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - win:Blackjack -0.01 0.01 -0.71 0.477 -0.03 0.02
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - win:Probability -0.02 0.01 -1.60 0.109 -0.05 0.01
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - win:Mixed -0.03 0.01 -3.60 < .001 -0.04 -0.01
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - win:Roulette 0.05 0.02 2.53 0.011 0.01 0.10
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - win:Video poker 0.03 0.02 1.12 0.261 -0.02 0.07

27
b: the reference of win
Term estimate std.error statistic p-value conf.low conf.high
(Intercept) 5.09 0.01 485.57 < .001 5.07 5.11
Outcome -0.07 0.00 -16.07 < .001 -0.08 -0.06
Outcome Dummy – loss 0.70 0.00 198.74 < .001 0.69 0.71
Blackjadddck -0.02 0.01 -1.79 0.073 -0.04 0.00
Probability -0.04 0.01 -4.11 < .001 -0.06 -0.02
Mixed 0.05 0.01 7.45 < .001 0.03 0.06
Roulette 0.01 0.02 0.75 0.452 -0.02 0.05
Video poker 0.05 0.02 2.86 < .001 0.02 0.09
BC_holidays – Yes 0.05 0.01 7.27 < .001 0.03 0.06
Early daytime -0.08 0.00 -22.45 < .001 -0.09 -0.07
Late daytime 0.03 0.00 7.73 < .001 0.02 0.04
Night 0.53 0.00 140.19 < .001 0.52 0.54
Weekend - Yes 0.05 0.00 18.78 < .001 0.04 0.05
Log(Session count) -0.23 0.00 -93.33 < .001 -0.23 -0.22
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - loss 0.15 0.01 30.51 < .001 0.14 0.16
Outcome:Blackjack -0.01 0.01 -1.22 0.222 -0.03 0.01
Outcome:Probability -0.01 0.01 -0.99 0.324 -0.04 0.01
Outcome:Mixed -0.02 0.01 -2.63 0.009 -0.03 0.00
Outcome:Roulette -0.08 0.02 -4.75 < .001 -0.11 -0.05
Outcome:Video poker 0.05 0.02 2.51 0.012 0.01 0.09
Outcome Dummy - loss:Blackjack 0.16 0.01 16.18 < .001 0.14 0.17
Outcome Dummy - loss:Probability -0.10 0.01 -10.58 < .001 -0.12 -0.08
Outcome Dummy - loss:Mixed -0.06 0.01 -8.59 < .001 -0.07 -0.04
Outcome Dummy - loss:Roulette 0.29 0.02 16.55 < .001 0.26 0.33
Outcome Dummy - loss:Video poker -0.04 0.02 -2.69 0.007 -0.08 -0.01
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - loss:Blackjack 0.01 0.01 0.71 0.477 -0.02 0.03
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - loss:Probability 0.02 0.01 1.61 0.109 -0.01 0.05
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - loss:Mixed 0.03 0.01 3.60 < .001 0.01 0.04
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - loss:Roulette -0.05 0.02 -2.53 0.011 -0.10 -0.01
Outcome:Outcome Dummy - loss:Video poker -0.03 0.02 -1.12 0.261 -0.07 0.02

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 Figure 1. Between-session chasing by game type. Note: The shaded area is
standard errors.

29

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