International gaming conference headed to Las Vegas

By Richard N. Velotta

Published Friday, April 6, 2012 | 3:59 p.m.

Updated Monday, April 9, 2012 | 8:31 a.m.

The University of Nevada and UNLV on Monday will announce details of a collaboration to bring one of the gaming industry’s most important international conferences to Las Vegas next year.

Bill Eadington, professor and director of the UNR Center for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, and Bo Bernhard, professor and executive director of the UNLV International Gaming Institute, will announce that the 15th International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking will be held in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace from May 27-31.

The conference has been conducted every three years since 1974 and has been staged in Las Vegas four times.

Eadington and UNR have been the driver of the event since its inception and in recent years, the event has been held in Lake Tahoe. But it also has been held in London, Montreal and other international locations.

The event was next scheduled for this year, but cuts in staff at UNR resulted in it being postponed. Eadington said the collaboration with UNLV would enable the conference to continue.

“I have known Bo Bernhard for more than a decade and we work very well together,” Eadington said. “In addition, with Don Snyder, the dean of UNLV’s hotel management school, it should enable us to get some really high profile keynote speakers.”

Snyder was a former casino executive with Boyd Gaming and was named interim dean of the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration in 2010.

Details of the conference will be discussed by Eadington and Bernhard at UNLV.

In the past, the event has been aimed at academics and researchers, and the content of the event has evolved over the years with early versions focusing on how mathematicians were exploiting ways to win more frequently at blackjack.

In an interview with The Sun in 2010, Eadington explained that over the years, there was more discussion about problem and pathological gambling, treatment issues and the evolution of technology in the industry.

At the 2009 conference, about 180 professional papers were presented and about 300 people attended the event. Eadington said a call for papers is expected to be made later this year and that because the event would be in Las Vegas, there could be 400 to 500 people in attendance.

The 2013 conference is expected to address online gaming, the future of Las Vegas and casinos in the United States, gambling in Asia, gambling addiction and new gaming industry technologies.

The conference is expected to attract gaming regulators, health professionals, mathematicians, international representatives, policymakers, gambling enthusiasts, academics and researchers.