How Online Gambling Hijacks an Element of Play: Anticipation
Why this psychological trap is so hard to resist.
Posted May 18, 2026 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Let’s start with the experience of two familiar games: soccer (football, futbol to the rest of the world) and ice hockey.
On the surfaces of pitch and rink, they couldn’t seem more unlike. Soccer is excruciatingly slow; two halves of a 90-minute game might end in a score of 1-0. For that interval, the spectator sits at the edge of a stadium bleacher or leans forward on the couch at home. Wait for it . Hockey, by contrast, is blindingly fast. In the stands and even on today’s ultra-high-definition television screens, the watcher may lose the puck in a hundred mph slapshot. Producers up in the booth compensate with instant slo-mo replay on the jumbotron. “He shoots! He… scores !" (Let me see that again, and again...)
But the two dissimilar sports share a continuous play that flows back and forth, side to side, seizing spectators’ eyeballs. Hanging on the edge, spectators keenly anticipate the rare goal. Foghorns rev up fans with a blaring diminished triad. Waaaaaanggh! Let’s GO ! Buff-a- LO !
Frontloading Anticipation
In my scheme, Anticipation is the first Element of Play. (A metaphor rather than an element like, say, platinum or tin.) Fundamental emotional states progress in play, beginning in keen Anticipation and unfolding to Surprise and Pleasure, and then opening toward the dividends that play pays: Understanding, Strength, and Poise .
For spectators, both soccer and hockey are heavily front-loaded with Anticipation , the pleasurable impending sense of what’s next . It’s hard to look away, if only for the fear of missing out.
Online Gambling and FOMO
That same feeling of immanence, a keen pleasure in itself, but sharpened and multiplied by electronic means, drives the enthusiasm for online gambling, an industry that reportedly reached $132 billion in worldwide revenues in 2026 and that grows at more than 10% annually.
If you have watched the Stanley Cup Finals this spring (or any other televised sporting event in the last few years), you have seen the alluring commercials for virtual casinos. They offer promotional incentives, free bets, initial deposits in online accounts, all loss-leaders that hook the most vulnerable customers with the promise of instant winnings.
Their target market? Men between the ages of 18 and 30 with higher incomes and time on their hands. This age cohort, not coincidentally, features a prefrontal cortex that has not yet matured.
The forebrain, again not incidentally, handles assessments of risk, one of several “ executive functions ” that contour prudent behavior. Online gambling games, powered by sophisticated, personalized algorithms, roll on the fiction that a losing streak can be “chased.” As the play unfolds, continually, amidst blaring audio cues and an attractive barrage of flashing lights, algorithms promise that a win is just around the corner. The strategy keeps gamers gaming.
A recent “Play in Mind” post explored the powerful alliance between behavioral neuroscience and the junk food industry that has delivered snack foods that melt in the mouth, tricking the brain into believing that the tempting food has already been consumed. “Betcha can’t eat just one!” the commercials say, forthrightly. Snackers, their reward circuits hijacked, typically lose that bet because food chemists have orchestrated the noshes to delay satisfaction.
The stakes for this losing bet—an expanding middle—are relatively low compared to the risks of online gambling. No one is financially ruined by snack food. But because casinos limit winning accounts and pursue other strategies that disadvantage players, 95% of online gamblers lose long-term. Win some, lose some? No. The online game heavily favors the house.
Economists track rising bankruptcies, increasing debt-collection referrals, and auto-loan defaults and repossessions as consequences among those lured and snared by online gaming.
For Perspective: Wagering Is Not New
Gambling is ancient. Dice games date from deep into the Paleolithic. Picture our stone-age ancestors sheltering in a cave, on a winter evening forty-thousand years ago, seated on hides and wiling away the dark hours tossing knucklebones of goats or deer. Irregularly shaped, these proto-dice would land favoring one side or another. And this, so early on and so remarkably, introduced notions of probability, the outcomes that hang so tantalizingly around games of chance.
Play and Fortunetelling
Very likely, that kind of gambling was tightly interlaced with divination. In that sometimes-precarious subsistence existence, what might be might be , and thus fate needed interrogating.
But less portentously, it’s easy to imagine playful games that passed the time in the dim and flickering firelight. What did those ice-age ancestors wager? We can only guess. And what did winners gain beyond self-satisfaction and the admiration or enmity of their peers? Who knows?
Apart from lively anticipation, the one thing we can say for sure about those ancient precedents is that they required gathering. As did the much later social games of cards played around tables for recreation. Crucially, party games often limit risks, as in the $20 buy-in for a friendly evening of poker, or a mutually agreed upon loss floor of, say, $100 in a lower-stakes game.
In those instances, the wisdom of the crowd at play cautions prudence. No fortune is at stake. (The same cannot be said of professional gambling settings, of course.)
Online Gambling Is Different and Startlingly New
In online gaming, though, players can carry the casino in their pockets on cellphones. Whatever restraint that might have obtained in playful social settings is missing on the portable, personal screen.
The psychological appeal driving imprudent wagering and vast profit for a new industry turns on a feature of anticipation and pleasure that neuroscience is just beginning to understand.
For spectators leaning in and leaning forward, anticipating a soccer or hockey goal, the moment of peak pleasure, the “ dopamine rush,” occurs not as you would expect after a score. Instead, intense thrill spikes immediately beforehand. Even if the goalie deflects the ball or if the puck goes wide, that’s when onlookers feel the most intense, momentary emotion . Hit or miss that is, the thrill precedes the outcome rather than follows it.
Hijacking Anticipation: No Time to Cool Down
Online casinos deploy artificial intelligence algorithms that have been tailored to target gamblers’ weaknesses They reward impulsivity in particular. The games cleverly offer intermittent rewards, near-misses that supply continual, magnetic surprises and enticements. The speed of the games, their surprising, ongoing refreshment, leaves no time for reflection or regret, no time for weakened players to cool down.
Carrying a virtual bank in their wallets (a credit card) leaves these gamblers vulnerable to strategies that intensify the desire for more ruinous wagering.
This is how online gaming hijacks the first three Elements of Play— Anticipation , Surprise , and Pleasure — but fails to pay the dividends of Understanding , Strength , and Poise .
Scott G, Eberle, “The Elements of Play: Toward a Philosophy and a Definition of Play,” American Journal of Play(2014); “Online Gambling Analysis Report 2026: $212.44 Market Opportunities, Trends, Competitive Landscape, and Forecasts,” Research and Markets Yahoo Finance (February 13, 2026)
Brett Hollenbeck, et.al., “The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling,” UCLA Anderson School of Management (February, 2026)
Luke Clark, “Decision-making During Gambling: An Integration of Cognitive and Psychobiological Approaches,” Philosophical Transactions (January 27, 2010);
Abigail Fagan, “How Online Sports Betting is Fueling a New Wave of Addiction,” Psychology Today (November 4, 2025).
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Scott G. Eberle, Ph.D. , is the vice president for play studies at The Strong, editor of its American Journal of Play , and lead contributor to its re:Play Blog .
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