Throttling Tilt: Ohio’s Plan To Make iCasino Players Catch Their Breath

It’s very easy to get out ahead of your skis when playing iCasino.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

It’s also very easy after getting out ahead of your skis to go into an uncontrolled freefall, bounce around like a rolled-up ball of Silly Putty, break 17 ankles (two of yours, 15 of innocent bystanders), wave off help, attempt to stand to make it down the mountain only to step on a rake, accidentally grab your wife’s friend’s butt in an attempt to maintain balance, fall once again, roll into the weirdly patched-together wooden fence at the bottom of the hill, and get a few splinters in your face when playing iCasino.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Which is why I applaud a little nugget stuck into the Ohio iGaming bill written by state Sen. Nathan Manning, which is set for a hearing Thursday. The nugget in the legislation is basically this: All online wagers would require accounts with default weekly deposit limits of $500 and time limits of five hours, though users can — and, I’m sure, will — adjust these limits.

You want to play some Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania Slingo? Cool. You have $500 and five hours to do so, unless you go in and change the settings. A little blackjack? Knock yourself out — five hours, $500. (The bill also includes iLottery and betting the ponies online, and the same beginning limits apply.)

This is, to me, common sense stuff that the operators should be instituting from the jump. 

“This is a good concept,” said Keith Whyte, founder and president of Safer Gambling Strategies and longtime responsible gambling advocate. “I’m not going to take a stand on how they chose the $500 and five hours — I suspect it’s arbitrary — but unless presented with evidence otherwise, it seems reasonable.”

Not only is it reasonable, but it would force operators to be good citizens (or at least pretend to be). Which, if you ask me, they’re not doing on their own.

Under the radar 

I have a pretty libertarian bent — which, if you’re reading this, you probably have as well — when it comes to gambling. But that doesn’t mean I think operators should be able to design their sites with the deck stacked against the player, pun very much intended.

The truth of the matter is the iCasino market, which has only come to seven states legally, has completely escaped the eyes (and red pens) of legislators. (Let’s not drag the sweepstakes sites into this right now.) Sports betting rules and regulations take up all the air in the room.

From the proposed SAFE Bet Act on down, it’s legislator after legislator seeking to rein in the sports betting industry. Proposed advertising bans, deposit limits, bonus bans, affordability checks … the list is exhaustive.

Not so for iCasino. I can’t recall seeing a bill in a legal state that seeks to materially change whatever the status quo is there.

Which means … no pre-set time or deposit limits. You want to limit yourself? You need to do so on your own. 

Which means … instead of online slots opening up with the minimum bet — sometimes as low as a dime — it’s initially set at $2 or higher. You want to bet less, you need to throttle it down yourself.

Which means … slots and table games on “lightning” mode, where players can spin a slot once every second, play a hand of blackjack once every two.

Which means … zero cooling off period between deposits, even if it’s clear the player is tilting.

Which means … bells and whistles going off even if your 10-cent bet wins a penny.

Which means … playthrough bonuses that, to cash out, would require an amount of luck not seen since Earth and the heavens were created.

While all the above are happening in iCasino, and all are arguably more potentially dangerous and detrimental to the player than anything happening in the world of sports betting, there’s not one peep from lawmakers — or the mainstream media — about it.

At least not yet.

Act now

Which is why operators should take it upon themselves to tidy up their act and put in the common sense measures without being told to do so, without being dragged in front of a Senate subcommittee, without having to wait for the media microscope to be turned on them.

I understand why it hasn’t happened yet: just seven states.

But if Ohio legalizes, that will make eight. And much like seemingly everything else in the modern gambling world, from daily fantasy sports on down, once New York acts on this — and it will, eventually — then the legislative and media eyeballs are going to come.

For the operators, acting now, banding together, putting in some real safeguards would be the smart move.

As such, I don’t expect it to happen. I’m not a complete idiot.

But if Ohio’s bill passes and this deposit/time limit becomes law there, then the operators won’t have much of a choice — at least in one state, at least with this singular item.

“It’s a great start,” Whyte said. “If it passes, it would be great if they funded research on those numbers to see what effect it had, what the impacts were on various groups of people.”

Money goes quick

I know firsthand how fun iCasino can be. I also know firsthand how quickly — and I mean quickly — it can spin out of control. (There’s another pun.)

I’ve Martingale’d my way from a $1 hand of blackjack to a $128 hand of blackjack. I’ve gotten a $5 bonus that somehow ended with me down $100 in real money. I’ve chased Lucky Larry up and down the Maine coast in an effort to erase losses in the hundreds of dollars that started with a 20-cent bet.

I truly believe in caveat emptor and all that, but I also truly believe the American iCasino experience could use some fine-tuning.

It’s happening in the U.K., where regulators there are forcing operators to conduct financial checks, where operators can no longer have their games be sped up with a minimum of five seconds between spins/deals, and where marketing rules have been tightened to allow people to opt out of receiving certain types of come-ons.

All things being equal, at some point legislators are going to turn their eyes to iCasino rules and regulations. If I were an operator, I would seek to short-circuit that in any way possible, and the easiest way to do that is to take some best practices from the U.K. and elsewhere, add a dollop of common sense, and at least put out the idea that you’re doing most everything humanly possible to care about the player.