In casinos everything is designed to encourage players to stay gambling as much as possible. The objective, according to psychiatrists, is to create a state of trance in the players. If you’ve been to a casino in Las Vegas, you have surely seen it: the lights, the music, the absence of clocks, the position of slot machines or roulettes.

“The tricks casinos use are numerous and almost imperceptible”, assured to BBC the psychiatrist Angels González Ibáñez, responsible for the Program of Pathologic Gambling in the Mataró Hospital (Spain).

A few days ago, González Ibáñez participated in an International Gambling Congress, in the city of Lake Tahoe (Nevada, USA). This event took place in one of the casino hotels established in the city. This is what she assures experimenting while visiting this casino:

# Time: There are no clocks, so that players lose the sense of time.

# Superstition: In Lake Tahoe’s casinos they give necklaces to the visitors in order to make them believe that those things will give them good luck.

# Food and drink: Everything in Lake Tahoe is a casino. Hotels are in the casinos. Once you are inside, they invite you to eat and drink, and they give you alcoholic drinks.

# Oxygen: In hotel rooms there is more oxygen, so that people don’t rest too much and go out to play and gamble.

# Lights and music: In slot machines they use special music and lights that encourage the player to keep on gambling.