Too Fast, Too Furious, When It Comes To Online Casinos? Experts Don’t Think So

Anyone who has ever dabbled in online casino play knows it can move at the lightning clip. Blackjack hands coming at you like a machine gun, slot spins so fast it’s near-impossible to keep up.

And it would seem, on the surface, this could be an issue. That this fast-paced environment where bets can be made before a gambler has a chance to really consider if another spin of the roulette wheel is a good idea may be a direct cause of problem gambling.

But evidence suggests the answer is not as clear as one would think.

Take the United Kingdom, which recently mandated a minimum five-second delay between plays on online casino games. It’s part of a broader package of regulations aimed at reducing gambling harm in what is generally considered the world’s largest regulated online casino market.

But industry experts and researchers aren’t convinced speed limits alone will make much difference.

“In reality I don’t think it’s been a hugely impactful change in isolation,” said Alun Bowden, senior vice president for strategic insight at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming. While some research suggests faster games correlate with problem gambling, Bowden isn’t “totally convinced it really does a great deal” to prevent problematic behaviors.

“I’m not sure it’s especially detrimental to gameplay either,” he said.  

The physics of play

The speed of casino games has always been a critical operational factor, both online and in traditional brick-and-mortar settings. Dr. Anthony Lucas, a professor at UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration who spent a decade working in casino operations, noted the stark difference between physical and digital blackjack play.

“If you’re playing heads up, it’s just one player and the dealer, you’re going to pump out probably 210 hands an hour,” Lucas explained. “But if you have seven spots, seven players, they’re each gonna get about 35 hands an hour.”

Online heads up? Pushing 400, upward of 450 hands an hour if one is determined to do so.

Even simple actions like paying out a blackjack hand become instantaneous rather than requiring manual chip counting.

“Say you get a blackjack and you have $100, it’s a 3-to-2 payoff. So I have to get out $150 in checks and then I have to take your cards and then I have to deal, whereas all that stuff happens electronically at a faster rate,” Lucas pointed out.

This fundamental difference between physical and online play raises questions about whether regulations designed for one environment make sense in the other.

Research reality check

A 2022 study of online roulette players found that enforcing a 60-second delay between spins (matching the pace of physical casinos) did reduce gambling somewhat — but the effect was modest. Players bet about 37.1% of their available funds with the delay versus 41.7% without it.

The study, published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, used a sample of 1,002 U.K. residents with online roulette experience.

Worth noting is that the study’s lead author, Philip Newall, serves on the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling, which advises the UK Gambling Commission and has received funding from various gambling research organizations. The study’s co-author Matthew Rockloff has similarly received research funds from multiple gambling research foundations and government agencies.

This relatively small impact — about a 10% reduction in betting intensity — may explain why when the UK Gambling Commission settled on its final rules, they opted for a much shorter five-second minimum delay rather than matching physical casino speeds.

The commission’s own internal research showed that “the majority (about 70 percent) of respondents report across seven categories of game that the average spin speed or length of time a hand is played is ‘just right’.” Among remaining respondents, more reported games as “too slow” rather than “too fast.”

The casino perspective

The focus on speed limits also obscures other potentially more significant factors. While MGM Resorts promotes the “extremely fast rate of play” on its slot machines as a feature, it emphasizes that “every spin is random” and previous results don’t affect future spins — suggesting player education about gambling mechanics may be as important as speed controls.

Speed is also deeply embedded in casino economics. Lucas noted that for new game innovations, particularly skill-based games, speed can be a make-or-break factor. 

“This is often a problem for skill-based games especially — it’s too slow, and so they never get made or they don’t get adopted because the operators are concerned that the game is too slow,” he said.

This focus on pace extends to personnel management in physical casinos. 

“They evaluate dealers every year,” Lucas said. “They’ll go up in the observation room and they’ll watch how fast, how many hands per hour they’re getting out when they have like three or four people in the game. That’s usually the standard and so they get evaluated based on their game speed.”

What’s coming to America?

The speed issue can become particularly relevant if more U.S. states legalize online casino. Might a state then try to implement something like the U.K. did?

Maybe, but it’s important to note the U.K.’s recent regulatory package reflects a broader approach. Beyond speed limits, it includes bans on autoplay features, restrictions on celebrating minimal wins, and requirements for real-time display of time spent gambling and net spending.

The regulations also block features that “speed up the time for a result to be shown or can give the illusion of control such as ‘turbo’ or ‘slam stops'” and prohibit “operator-led functionality which facilitates playing multiple simultaneous products” like roulette and blackjack tables.

What seems clear from both the research and industry experience is that speed of play, while worth considering, isn’t a silver bullet for preventing problem gambling. As Bowden noted, these measures should be viewed “directionally in terms of trying to make games less likely to trigger problematic behaviors” — even if the direct impact may be limited.

For U.S. regulators watching the U.K.’s more mature market, the lesson may be that effective consumer protection requires a comprehensive toolkit rather than focusing too heavily on any single factor like game speed.