The world of gambling used to be unfamiliar to women. For 4,500 years, they lived in a male-dominated society. Sometimes women even served as live bets in games, but female gamblers were rare.
According to researchers' estimates, 51% of the world population participates in any gambling activity yearly, and the online gambling market increases by 23% annually on average. The number of female gamblers is also growing dramatically.
To be sure, casinos don't offer particular games for women. But what do they prefer? According to statistics, females spend more time playing bingo, pokie machines, and online poker.
Why Do Women Gamble?
There is a fundamental difference between the female and male attitudes towards gambling. This distinction seems to result from the discrepancy between female and male gambling perceptions.
- So, if you ask a woman to describe her visit to a casino, she will most likely tell you about its atmosphere, other visitors, her feelings, and related emotions.
- If a man starts describing a casino, you will hear other stories: how he succeeded in playing roulette, about a greedy pokie machine, or about cards dealt to him in blackjack.
All male stories are related to money, either won or lost.
Some people believe that women use gambling to escape from their daily routine, and they prefer games with fewer actions and less creativity. Women enjoy gambling when they are financially and personally independent. Female gamblers attend casinos to have a good time. They do not care about wins and losses. They just enjoy every minute of their stay in the casino.
If you try to find the main reason for female gambling, it isn't easy to select one option since there are at least three of them:
- Gambling is a perfect thing to escape from problems. Women can carelessly gamble and pay attention to those who may look at them cross-eyed or think something wrong with them.
- Gambling is an excellent source of entertainment and pleasure for successful and wealthy business ladies.
- Some women gamble to get rich or to improve their financial situation.
Considering the three reasons mentioned above, we can conclude that women have deep and reasonable causes to gamble.
Women in Bingo
Let's start our review with bingo. It is an ancient game whose history dates back to 1530. It has been gaining popularity all over the world since that time. Bingo seems to be a female game of chance.
Indeed, over 100 million gamblers play bingo worldwide, and about 70% of them are women. According to a survey conducted in the United Kingdom, 25% of respondents gamble twice a week or more. So, why do females choose bingo?
Bingo's social aspect underlies this fact in land-based casinos and online gambling houses. Unlike males, female gamblers are not thrill-seekers. They like to chat, and there is no doubt that bingo is the most sociable kind of gambling. The chat features are essential in online bingo so players can gamble and enjoy chatting simultaneously, as shown in the screenshot.
It resembles a casino bingo hall, where you can chat and gamble. Considering this fact, it is easy to explain the enormous popularity of online bingo. Bingo has always been a popular social game, and now it can enjoy its well-deserved fame on the Internet.
Games that require skills (poker and blackjack) have always been more prevalent among males due to their addictive nature. Women adore bingo since it is a simple game that requires less attention, making it more suitable for social communication.
Female Pokie Fans
We know that males and females are very different human beings, and this statement also makes sense concerning their gambling preferences. If we consider the psychological aspects of gambling, males want to find strong feelings. They should dominate their opponents. And female gamblers prefer games based on luck. Therefore, they often choose bingo and pokies.
In addition, low bets in pokies seem very attractive to females since they do not want to win massive amounts. They just want to have fun and enjoy the gameplay. Pokie machines and bingo are the most economical kinds of gambling, and this fact attracts women. The games with low bets are viral among female gamblers.
Female Poker Players
Before its online version, gamblers only played poker in land-based casinos and poker rooms. Such clubs are not the most hospitable for women. Poker was considered an actual male game; if a woman appeared at the table, she was mocked. However, online poker protects women from sly hints and insults. Males don't prevail in online poker.
Communication capabilities offered by the Internet have completely changed the situation. Women start competing with men at online casinos. According to statistics, the current percentage of female gamblers in online poker rooms ranges from 30% to 60%. Due to qualifying online games, such as the World Series of Poker, female users have started participating in offline tournaments. Many female winners have recently appeared, including Annie Duke, Victoria Coren, Liv Boeree, and Vanessa Selbst.
Female Players at Online Casinos
The distribution of games in land-based casinos has been pretty straightforward:
- Female customers used to play simple low-bet games like pokies and bingo;
- Males used to prefer table games with higher betting limits.
Yet, the appearance of online games has dissolved these boundaries, and the number of online female gamblers is snowballing. The Internet has changed everything, and the gambling world is no exception.
The availability of online games allows female gamblers, who used to be embarrassed sitting at the poker or blackjack table along with males and suffering from their scornful gaze, to play anonymously. This opportunity reveals an attractive, consistent pattern: although female gamblers prefer pokie machines or bingo in land-based casinos, many online games show a 50:50 gender split.
According to a survey of 10,000 gamblers conducted in 2011 in the United Kingdom, 48% of players at online casinos are women. Most of them prefer video pokies and bingo.
It is interesting to compare bankrolls and time spent on gambling: women deposit on average 67 euros, while an average man's deposit is 94 euros.
Therefore, it is no wonder women lose less money, even though they play more! On average, female gamblers play nine hours monthly, while male gamblers spend only 6.5 hours at the table.
Researchers have also reported that women prefer online casinos to brick-and-mortar gambling clubs for the first visit. Various reasons can explain this fact. For example, the Internet gives women a sense of comfort and anonymity. They can participate in those games that have always been considered to be a prerogative of males. Due to the anonymity of online casinos, female gamblers may feel more comfortable surrounded by numerous male players.
Women in Land-Based Gambling Clubs Now
The number of female gamblers has significantly increased recently in land-based casinos. This may be caused by the fact that after acquiring the necessary skills at online casinos, women become more confident and believe that they play well to be ready to meet their male opponents face to face. The number of women participating in the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker has increased. Most of them acquired their skills while playing at online casinos.
Annette Obrestad can serve as an example of such a woman. A young Norwegian girl initially made a name for herself in online poker. She started playing at fifteen and chose a naïve childish nickname Annette_15. Since online gambling was anonymous, she could gamble, although the age of 18 years was set as the minimum age for gambling in Norway.
Annette could collect a bankroll thanks to free rolls without making a single deposit. She started winning big. She won several tournaments, including the $500,000 Pokerstars, $500,000 UltimateBet Tournament, and $136,000 Full Tilt Poker Tournament.
She was so well in poker that she could win without looking at her cards. During one of the tournaments, she even used adhesive tape to close her cards, sticking it on the screen. Thanks to her perfect art of bluffing and the ability to understand opponents' tricks, she could beat 180 other gamblers and win the tournament that made Annette famous.
The day before her 18th birthday, Annette won her most significant tournament. It was the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event. She set a new record by winning $2.1 million: the most significant prize a female gambler won for the whole poker history. This victory made her the only WSOPE Main Event winner and the youngest to obtain a World Series of Poker bracelet.
Conclusion
Most women are social creatures. This means they prefer those games where it is possible to chat (e.g., bingo). Unlike male gamblers, they don't want to dominate or search for solid feelings. Instead, they look for simplicity and pleasure. Women don't need to reach the top, so they select pokie machines and bingo. At the same time, more and more women are playing online poker, which allows them to eliminate males who annoy them.
In recent years, women's abilities and perseverance have helped to level gender-based differences in gambling. Women have contributed to significant changes in gambling. So, the world of gambling keeps developing.