Piyush Puranik, Ph. D., (Postdoctoral Scholar at the International Gaming Institute) presented a poster on "Exploring the relationship between gambling involvement and financial health" at the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) Annual Conference 2026.

UNLV's International Gaming Institute (IGI) hosted the 19th International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking May 26-28, 2026, at Bellagio. This triennial event is the world’s largest research conference in the gambling field and welcomed over 500 attendees from 26 countries, comprised of academics and researchers, industry…

Mana Azizsoltani, Ismael Gómez-Talal, Piyush Puranik, and Kasra Ghaharian (all International Gaming Institute) presented a conference paper titled "Quantifying Luck: Determining the probability of baccarat losses given player bet mix" at the 19th International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking in Las Vegas, Nevada. This…

Mana Azizsoltani, Kasra Ghaharian, and Ismael Gómez-Talal (all International Gaming Institute) published an open access article in the Acta Psychologica titled: "Interpretable behavioral clusters of gamblers through unsupervised learning." This paper identifies various heterogeneous profiles of highly involved gamblers.

Mana Azizsoltani (Hospitality) & Ismael Gomez-Talal (International Gaming Institute) published an article titled 'Building a brief multidomain questionnaire for gambling dual disorder: Psychometric validation and RDoC-based dimensional structure' in the International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research. This study yielded a…

Tiange Xu (International Gaming Institute) was featured in a G3 Newswire interview, "When Gambling Becomes Content," previewing his presentation at the 19th International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking. The Q&A draws on his dissertation research on slot machine vlogs to discuss why responsible gambling messaging in this content…

Sam Leif, Michael McCreery, P.G. Schrader (all Teaching and Learning), Kathleen Krach (Counselor Education, School Psychology, and Human Services), and Brett Abarbanel (International Gaming Institute) published an open-access research article, "Differentiating Video Game Expertise Using the Model of Domain Learning," in Frontiers in Education. The…

Tiange Xu (International Gaming Institute), Mehmet Erdem (Hospitality), Brett Abarbanel (International Gaming Institute; Hospitality), and Shane Kraus (Psychology) recently published a paper, "A Methodological Scoping Review for Video Analysis in Hospitality Research," in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights. This study reviewed 37…

Shane Kraus (Psychology), Tiange Xu (International Gaming Institute), and Andrea Dassopoulos (International Gaming Institute) have been awarded $312,239 from the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission's Responsible Gaming Grant program for their project "The Causal Impact of Sports Betting Promotional Offers." The research will provide…

Mana Azizsoltani (Hospitality), Jared Bischoff (Hospitality), Ashok Singh (Hospitality), and Kasra Ghaharian (International Gaming Institute) published an open access article in the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation titled: "A systematic review of machine learning applications in hotel occupancy forecasting."

Director of Research Kasra Ghaharian (International Gaming Institute), along with co-authors Mana Azizsoltani (Ph.D. Hospitality, May 2024) and Piyush Puranik (Postdoctoral Scholar, International Gaming Institute), recently published a new original research article in the journal Public Health. The study, "Characterising online gamblers exceeding…

Tiange Xu (International Gaming Institute) published an op-ed titled, "I Study Gambling Addiction. I Still Got Hooked on Cryptocurrency." in The Brief Addiction Science Information Source (BASIS). The piece examines how personal experience with cryptocurrency trading revealed blind spots in understanding the risks and harms associated with…