Ever since organized gambling was born, people have been looking for ways to beat the odds and get an extra, secret competitive edge. There are numerous instances of casino scandals where players have managed to manipulate the result of the game.
In the sports world, detecting substance abuse can hardly go undetected today. However, in the casino gaming industry, catching criminals is not so simple. Not to mention, gambling includes not only betting on casino games, but also betting on sports outcomes that in some cases, are seriously rigged.
For decades now, the world has been hearing of professional sports gambling scandals and gaming crimes in general. As long as it is humans who play sports and gamblers who are playing poker at a casino, there will be attempts to beat the odds. The culture for win-at-any-cost exists even now.
Casino Industry Facts: Doping and Match-Fixing in the Gambling World
Courts have indicted entire teams for match-fixing in sports. For example, there were ninety-three soccer players and officials who were indicted for fixing matches in Turkey. Authorities in FIFA are still investigating teams of Grenada, Cuba, and El Salvador for such accusations.
This goes even beyond fixing sports matches. In 2018, the Victoria police in Australia arrested six people for setting up their losses on a game ‘Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’ and gambling illegally on their own defeat. Gambling scandals are part of any industry that includes betting for real money, and it goes beyond doping players or losing on purpose.
One big part of online gambling is now oriented toward eSports, a fast growing competitive, fully digitalized industry. The emergence of video gaming has not eliminated problems associated with traditional sports such as gambling-related fixing of matches, and doping.
In fact, it is the world of eSports gambling that faces both corruption-related and internal threats. There’s the use of performance-enhancing drugs and match-fixing that makes the gambling industry more concerned than ever. Casino sites that offer eSports betting face big challenges in regulating these markets. Governments constantly attempt to regulate all gambling games and advice people to solely gamble at safe casino sites.
This makes it more important than ever to choose safe and secure websites to gamble on. With numerous tools at their disposal, top rated casinos for money have high success rate of offering realistic and fair gambling opportunities. On safe sites, you are very unlikely to be found in casino situations where eSports matches are set up.
When it comes to poker play in casino, no one can tell you a sure way to keep yourself focused or boost your performance. People who gamble, both online and in land-based casinos often do their own, private research of enhancing drugs. They experiment without any repercussions since, when gambling online, doping is really hard to catch.
One of the most prominently used drugs is Ritalin or Methylphenidate. This is a psycho stimulant that’s prescribed to people who suffer from ADHD – attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
However, because of the drug’s ability to improve a person’s attention and stave off their fatigue, it has become a habit for people to use it to get through the day or complete tasks without getting tired. Such drugs are not only popular with students who spend entire nights preparing for exams, or adults who need some extra energy to get through their busy days. They are also used by gamblers who want to boost their cognitive capabilities to win at casino games.
Even though your success in gambling is based mostly on luck, there’s a lot about your performance that comes from skill and cognitive capabilities. In a Ritalin study, this drug was compared to Modafilin (a stay-awake drug) and traditional caffeine use. People who used a placebo won 51% of games. People who dosed up on an actual Ritalin drug won 54.1% of the time.
Doping is not a great idea – not legally and not medically. However, in the past few years, many gamblers have decided to opt for drugs like Ritalin, Propranolol, and Piracetam to keep themselves as alert as possible when making gambling decisions.
This is even more emphasized with high rollers who spend hours at a time gambling on poker tables. On tournaments on online casino sites, you could also find people who use enhancing drugs to keep themselves alert. It’s similar to gaming world doping. For example, a Counter-Strike player admitted that all players were on Adderall when they played a $250000-purse tournament.
Seeing how some of the top rated casino sites constantly have tournaments for their most popular poker games, it goes without saying that doping is a serious issue in this industry, too. The attention span can diminish after some time, which is why there are players who decide to take matters into their own hands and dose up on stimulants that will keep them alert and focused.
In poker games, there have also been gambling scandals related to drug use. For example, the poker professional Paul Philips, a person who has a one World Poker Tour title and has won over $2.3 million on this game, credits a lot of his success to using such drugs. Even Phil Hellmuth, a Poker Hall of Fame member has said that most of the successful players have taken brain-enhancing drugs at least at some point of their rise to the fame and fortune.
The bottom line
Match fixing, doping, and other scandals have changed and progressed in the gambling industry. To be fair, casinos and sports institutions use various methods to prevent this and catch criminals in the act. This is where all these scandals come from. People who play gambling games and perform criminal acts have a serious difficulty of tricking the system today, especially if they gamble at a renowned casino.
For players, it is much safer to gamble online now. Since there are sites that allow for minimal deposits (read the article here for more information), players can gamble safely on high-rated sites without any risks to their budget.
Such scandals have made mainstream news across the world, but this remains a huge and growing industry. Online gambling is dominating the gambling industry today. It is more important than ever to use trustworthy sources for your gambling endeavours.
