Sarah Koenig

Kunder was one of Watanabe's handlers at Caesars.

In response, a spokesman wrote to me that diagnosing problem gambling is extremely difficult, even for trained clinicians, and that, quote, unquote.

The company also noted that Caesars was the first to have a national self-exclusion program that allows customers to ban themselves from Caesars casinos.

And it's true, Bachman did not ban herself from any casino.

If you're not sold by now on the idea that the casino is partly to blame for Bachman's losses, that Caesars wronged Bachman, in the lawsuit's words, quote, "...by enticing her to gamble, even though it knew that she did not have the capabilities to resist such enticements," unquote.

Maybe two researchers at Southern Illinois University, Reza Habib and Mark Dixon, can at least persuade you that Bachman made irrational choices about gambling, not because she's an idiot, but because neurons in the reward-seeking part of her brain were overriding her rational decision-making.

Reza Habib is a neuroscientist and so, of course, does not like to anthropomorphize the brain.

But I don't mind saying it.

Her wiring had turned against her.

Habib's colleague, Mark Dixon, is a behavioral psychologist.

His lab at Southern Illinois is set up like a casino.

He's got slots, a roulette table, a blackjack table, craps table.

Really?

Habib and especially Dixon have spent a long time studying what's called the near-miss effect.

In slot machines, a near-miss is just what it sounds like.

It's when, say, two cherries line up on the payoff line, and then the third is about to come but stops just short or just past the payoff line.

It's like you almost won, which, of course, in a game of chance like slots, is impossible.

The results are random.

Despite that, gamblers in Dixon's lab will inevitably say that the near-misses are closer to a win than a loss, that they like them more than a loss.

That reaction is what Dixon calls maladaptive.