RENO — I could hardly wait to share with our contacts at University of Nevada news of my windfall: A $2 payoff on a quarter slipped into a slot machine as I'd dashed from plane to rental car booth at Reno-Tahoe International Airport.
My news elicited indulgent smiles and a collective lifting of eyebrows. These people had heard it all before: They're the staff of the university's Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming.
Louis Phillips, a former president of Harrah's-Nevada and now professor of gaming management at the university, suggested that I not tempt fate leaving town. Airport slots offer poor odds, he explained--"They figure you're not coming back."
At the institute, gambling in all its guises is the game. Strictly academically, mind you. Here on the campus, institute staff research and analyze issues surrounding legalized gaming--from parents who leave their kids unattended at casinos to gambling's rise to respectability to the currently hot topic of gambling on the Internet.
The institute is a source of information for legislators, political and social scientists and others assessing the broad social impact of gambling.
Ask institute director William R. Eadington what he and his staff of four bet on and he'll tell you, "Virtually nothing."
They know that gamblers rarely prosper. They can cite the odds. But the focus of their research is on the regulation, legalization and social impact of gambling.
Issues such as:
* The link between gambling and crimes such as embezzlement and fraud.
* The economic and political spinoffs from gambling.
* Destructive behaviors of the pathological gambler.
* How changing mores and ethics have opened the door to widespread legalization.
Mention gambling, Eadington says, and there are two equally vocal camps: "One side says nothing bad happens when casinos come to town. The other side says nothing good happens." The institute, founded in 1989 and unique among the nation's universities, sides with neither. Its role is that of interested observer.
Every three years, scholars, regulators and entrepreneurs gather in a major international city under institute auspices to discuss gambling's worldwide impact. These conferences have spawned four books that provide fascinating glimpses into the history of legal gambling in modern America--how it came out of the "sin cities" of 1930s Nevada to evolve into glitzy Las Vegas casinos and then spread to cities large and small nationwide.
