Project Summary

The overarching purpose of this project is to understand, and ultimately, to increase treatment accessibility for poker players who may not otherwise seek help for gambling problems. This study will examine factors related to help-seeking among poker players. More specifically, we will explore several treatment-seeking factors that may be specific to poker players including the general experiences of poker players with gambling problems who have sought to change their gambling, problem insight and readiness for change, barriers to accessing treatment, motivations for seeking treatment, as well as natural recovery and non-traditional approaches to changing problematic gambling behaviours (e.g., self-directed change). This project represents an important step towards improving and expanding the available treatment approaches for poker players.