Online Gambling of Pure Chance: Wager Distribution, Risk Attitude, and Anomalous Diffusion

Sci Rep. 2019 Oct 11;9(1):14712. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50168-2.

Abstract

Online gambling sites offer many different gambling games. In this work we analyse the gambling logs of numerous solely probability-based gambling games and extract the wager and odds distributions. We find that the log-normal distribution describes the wager distribution at the aggregate level. Viewing the gamblers' net incomes as random walks, we study the mean-squared displacement of net income and related quantities and find different diffusive behaviors for different games. We discuss possible origins for the observed anomalous diffusion.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.