Connection Between Poker Playing and Problem Gambling with Sociodemographic Factors and Other Gambling Activities

Exploring Socioeconomic, Demographic and Psychological Predictors of At-risk Gambling and Participation in Specific Gambling Activities: A Comparative Approach

In this research, we aimed to provide a comparative examination of at-risk gambling and four types of gambling activities from the standpoint of socioeconomic, demographic and psychological factors. Using data collected from 7,385 adults aged 18-64 from Serbia, we investigated how specific variables contribute to the likelihood of participation in lottery playing, sports betting, casino games, and slot games across the three time frames (lifetime, last year, and last month), and at-risk gambling. Logistic regressions revealed that male sex, ages 18 to 34, drug use, harmful alcohol use, and elevated levels of distress were significant predictors of participation in any point of life in sports betting, casino games, and slot games, and at-risk gambling. Secondary education, residing in an urban area, and harmful alcohol use predicted - across three time frames - the engagement in lottery playing, sports betting, and slot games playing, respectively. Smoking, and specifically heavy smoking, was shown to be predictive of lifetime participation in all types of gambling, while having single marital status and being unemployed emerged as the factors increasing the odds for the last-month slot games playing. Notably, the 18 to 24 age cohort turned out to be the most vulnerable part of the population, as they displayed the largest odds for at-risk gambling, and both lifetime and last-year involvement in sports betting, casino games, and slot games playing. This highlights the necessity of targeted public health interventions for the young adult population and people who experiment or already experience problems related to substance use.

Influence of Family Sports Games on the Development of Early Communication Skills in Autistic Children

With the development of society, the number of autistic children in China is increasing, which not only makes the family's happiness very low, but also seriously affects the development of teenagers and society. Among the symptoms of autistic children, early childhood communication skills have received extensive attention. In traditional rehabilitation training, with a lack of parents' participation, most of the training cannot arouse the interest of autistic children, so the treatment effect is not obvious. Based on this, this paper proposes the application of family sports games to improve the early communication ability of autistic children. This article aims to investigate the role of family sports games in promoting the development of early communication skills in autistic children. This paper uses the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to score the comprehensive ability of family sports games. The experimental results of this paper show that before the experiment, the comprehensive scores of children's communication ability in the control group and the experimental group were 18.92 and 18, respectively, which were generally low, and there was no significant difference. This shows that the communication skills of the two groups of children before the experiment are relatively poor. After the test, the children's comprehensive score of communication ability in the experimental group increased by 35.8 points, and the difference was significant, indicating that family sports games have a great impact on the development of children's communication ability.

Online Gambling Activity, Pay-to-Win Payments, Motivation to Gamble and Coping Strategies as Predictors of Gambling Disorder Among e-sports Bettors

Research on esports activity usually captures it from the perspective of involvement in gaming. This study presents the results of the first research in Poland (N = 438) on esports betting (ESB). ESB is compared to other forms of e-gambling and involvement in pay-to-win games. The aim was to build a predictive model of gambling disorder among people betting on esports. A predictive model of gambling disorder based on ordinal regression was built, including sociodemographic variables, involvement in esports betting, involvement in other Internet activities connected to ESB, as well as psychological variables-motivation to gamble and coping strategies. The results showed that gambling disorder among esports bettors is associated with time spent on one game session, placing other forms of online gambling bets once a week or more often, and paying in pay-to-win games. Gambling disorder was also predicted by escape coping strategies and lower engaged strategies as well as financial and coping motivation to bet on esports results. The results show the crucial role of psychological factors (motivation, coping) in the development of esports betting addiction. Esports betting is an activity associated with both gambling and gaming-involvement in both activities explains the development of ESB addiction. There is a need for further research focused on the specificity of esports betting behavior to discover the direction of links among gaming, gambling, and esports gambling.