Online gaming hijacks the impending sense of what’s next.

Losing bets also fail to pay dividends of genuine play.

Online casinos eliminate restraints by offering portable, constant access to gambling.

Let’s start with the experience of two familiar games: soccer (football, futbol to the rest of the world) and ice hockey.

On the surfaces of pitch and rink, they couldn’t seem more unlike. Soccer is excruciatingly slow; two halves of a 90-minute game might end in a score of 1-0. For that interval, the spectator sits at the edge of a stadium bleacher or leans forward on the couch at home. Wait for it. Hockey, by contrast, is blindingly fast. In the stands and even on today’s ultra-high-definition television screens, the watcher may lose the puck in a hundred mph slapshot. Producers up in the booth compensate with instant slo-mo replay on the jumbotron. “He shoots! He… scores!" (Let me see that again, and again...)

But the two dissimilar sports share a continuous play that flows back and forth, side to side, seizing spectators’ eyeballs. Hanging on the edge, spectators keenly anticipate the rare goal. Foghorns rev up fans with a blaring diminished triad. Waaaaaanggh! Let’s GO! Buff-a-LO!

Frontloading Anticipation

In my scheme, Anticipation is the first Element of Play. (A metaphor rather than an element like, say, platinum or tin.) Fundamental emotional states progress in play, beginning in keen Anticipation and unfolding to Surprise and Pleasure, and then opening toward the dividends that play pays: Understanding, Strength, and Poise.

For spectators, both soccer and hockey are heavily front-loaded with Anticipation, the pleasurable impending sense of what’s next. It’s hard to look away, if only for the fear of missing out.

Online Gambling and FOMO

That same feeling of immanence, a keen pleasure in itself, but sharpened and multiplied by electronic means, drives the enthusiasm for online gambling, an industry that reportedly reached $132 billion in worldwide revenues in 2026 and that grows at more........

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