Brett Abarbanel never realized how important gaming would become in her life.
She always knew that one day she would become a professor of gaming – she just didn’t know how it would happen.
Growing up in the shadow of the beautiful Del Mar Thoroughbred Club near San Diego, Abarbanel, now executive director of UNLV’s International Gaming Institute, learned about horse racing and gambling at an early age while working at the track, made a little money playing poker while in college and even married a professional gambler.
This month, Abarbanel will lead further studies of the gambling industry when the institute she leads hosts the three-day 19th International Gambling and Risk-Taking Conference May 26-28 at the Bellagio.
Launched by University of Nevada, Reno, economist and business professor William Eadington in 1974, the conference brings together academics, researchers, industry leaders, professional gamblers, and regulatory and government officials to exchange theories and ideas about the casino industry.
When Eadington died in 2013, one of his UNLV counterparts, Bo Bernhard, then the gaming institute’s director, took over operations.
Held every three years, the last time the conference was held in 2023, more than 500 participants from 25 countries attended and discussed business, economics, public policy, mathematics, social science and injury prevention.
This year, in addition to the usual presentation of research papers, panel discussions and keynote addresses on various topics are planned.
MIT professor Anette “Peko” Hosoi, widely recognized for researching the role of skill and luck in sports and other activities, will bring her mathematical framework to professional sports, fantasy sports, cyclocross racing, coin flips and mutual funds, illustrating where each falls on the skill-luck spectrum in an opening keynote address.
Conference topics
Among the other topics planned for discussion at the event include:
— Real-time artificial intelligence for predictive responsible gambling using live game transaction data.
— Why the courts and Congress should — but won’t — ban prediction markets.
— Barriers between cannabis and gambling in Nevada and the potential for integration.
— Risk management in eSports gaming: Addressing privacy and regulation in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
— An in-depth analysis of slot vlogs on YouTube.
— The theory and practice of successful sports betting.
— Math, data, and cognitive bias: Educating teens to make informed decisions about gambling.
The logistics of the Gambling and Risk-Taking Conference is a huge undertaking, but Abarbanel approaches it with his usual big smile and humor. Her colleagues pitch in and enjoy working with her to bring the program together.
“Just to see how she interacts with everyone involved and treats them all with equal respect, equal friendship is incredible,” said Alan Feldman, director of strategic initiatives at UNLV’s Gaming Institute.
“Her knowledge of all aspects of gaming and gambling is frankly remarkable,” Feldman said. “She can deal with what’s happening in esports, what’s happening in non-monetary gaming and gaming, obviously gambling in all its forms, sports, online, land-based, tables, slots. She just has a great mind and an ability to keep it all accessible.”
It started in Del Mar
Abarbanel’s broad knowledge of all things gambling began at the Del Mar track, built by American singer and actor Bing Crosby, where she shadowed a host of track workers to learn everything there was to know about horse racing and gambling.
“You know, it’s ‘where the surf meets the grass down at Old Del Mar, right?'” Abarbanel said, recalling Crosby’s song about the track. “‘Take a plane, take a train, take a car.’ Those are the words right out of his song. It’s a wonderful, wonderful race track.”
She was about 16 the first time she went to the track, and during the following summers she worked a variety of jobs there, including riding in the ambulance that followed the horses to be ready for potential injuries to horses or their riders and handing out the bouquets to the winning horses and their owners at the end of a race.
Her favorite job, she said, was in the press box, “hanging out with all the math geeks.
“That’s where I discovered I was one of them,” she said.
She studied statistics at Brown University in Rhode Island and took a job grading papers for $8 an hour.
It was around that time that the poker craze took off across the country.
“So I had a friend at Brown who found out I majored in statistics, and he said, ‘Oh, I’d love to have a young woman majoring in statistics in my poker game. Can I put money on you?” And after about, I would say, three to six months, I was losing money myself.
A move to Las Vegas
She met her future husband, a professional gambler, while playing poker and he was interested in moving to Las Vegas. She thought with a degree in statistics she would be able to find work somewhere in the city. She ended up taking a job in data analytics at the UNLV International Gaming Institute that allowed her to work while pursuing a master’s degree.
“After I finished my master’s degree, I looked around a bit for jobs,” she said. “A lot of the slot providers hire mathematicians, so I interviewed for a couple of those positions. But in the end, I had really fallen in love with academia. My father was an academic, serving as a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a few other places before that for about 60 years. So I knew it was a beautiful academic world here and I thought my world was interesting to me. UNLV in our amazing College of Hospitality and continued at UNLV.”
As a student, she received the Best Dissertation and Best Dissertation awards for her work on sportsbook patronage and online gaming user experience, respectively.
She wrote an article on women’s participation in poker but became involved in all aspects of the gaming industry, including an emphasis on problem gambling and addiction.
“I worked on the Nevada Problem Gambling Project, which has been here at IGI for about 20 years now,” she said. “I’ve worked on various operations analysis, innovation and technology projects. And for the last 15 or 16 years, one of my core areas is looking at the overlap between video games, eSports and gambling.”
Her work on problem gambling earned her a position as a research associate at the University of Sydney School of Psychology’s Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic.
Top jobs in 2023
Abarbanel was named executive director of the UNLV International Gaming Institute in January 2023.
Now, a large part of her mission is to stay on top of issues associated with gambling, and her coordination of this month’s conference holds Las Vegas and UNLV as the gold standard for research on the industry.
“The 19th International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking is full of gambling research, gambling discussion, all things gambling and risk taking.” she said. “You’re going to see academic research, you’re going to see industry perspectives, you’re going to see players’ perspectives. Anything that’s relevant here, these are the things that we’re going to talk about over three days. Whatever your interest, there’s going to be something for you May 26-28 at the Bellagio.”
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Background on Brett
Here are five things you probably didn’t know about Brett Abarbanel:
-Her go-to movie franchise: Bond. James Bond. “The best Bond movie is ‘Goldfinger’ and the best Bond is Sean Connery. ‘Goldfinger’ was a classic. It’s perfect. No complaints. Maybe not so much the representation of women, but you know, it’s 1964. It’s a movie of its time, isn’t it? And I think we should think about things in that capacity.”
-Her biggest poker win was her husband, Jared. “I picked him up at a game after bluffing him out of a small pot. I also won that pot, so a more correct answer is: my spouse plus a $100 bonus.”
–She is a big fan of Philip Pullman and Kurt Vonnegut. “I really enjoy the ‘His Dark Materials’ series by Philip Pullman. I’ve read it a couple of times. It’s been fun to see them being made into movies and HBO shows and stuff. And if someone ever manages to pull off ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ in film media, I’m going to be really, really impressed.”
– Her favorite destination is Finland. “My favorite place to go is Finland, because I’m a loud American lady, and Finland is a beautiful, peaceful, quiet place. So when I’m there, I just feel like it’s a sense of Zen. And I really like the people. I’ve had the opportunity to go there a few times, and not only in general, enjoy myself, but also enjoy working.”
-On a lazy Saturday afternoon, you’ll see her walking her German Shepherd on Henderson’s trails. “She really loves seeing other dogs and people and going on hikes is a nice way to get that experience. Henderson has an incredible Parks and Recreation Department and an incredible series of trails. We never have a shortage of options on where to take her.”
