Who needs to keep a straight face and not reveal their emotions? Poker players! Despite sometimes unintended consequences, a doctor is betting that poker players are going to be the next big market for Botox.

In the Huffington Post, David Moye quotes Dr. Jack Berdy as saying, "Some people might get a card they like or don’t like and raise their eyebrows. If that’s the common reaction, we can put Botox in certain areas to minimize them."

Berdy is marketing a combination of Botox and facial fillers for players called "Pokertox."
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In Las Vegas, Atlantic City and on Indian Reservations, people throw dice and take their chances. Researchers have spotted something predictable in the seemingly random throw of the dice. By applying chaos theory and some high school level mechanics, they determined that by knowing the initial conditions–such as the viscosity of the air, the acceleration of gravity, and the friction of the table–it should be possible to predict the outcome when rolling the dice.

While it’s doubtful that a gambler will be able to take these types of measurements around the dice table before starting to play, it’s still interesting information. read more

In this tougheconomy, the allure of buying lottery tickets seems like apretty enticing way to erase financial problems. But newresearch shows that people who won between $50,000 and$150,000 did not solve their debt problems and onlypostponed bankruptcy.

Mid-level lottery winners did not pay off their debt orincrease equity in new or existing assets. And though thesemid-level lottery winners were less likely than smallwinners (those who won less than $10,000) to file forbankruptcy immediately after winning, they were 50% morelikely to file for bankruptcy three to five years afterwinning their prize.

Researcher Paige Marta Skiba says,

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.read more

More than just losing your money! – Smoking and drinking go together, and gambling? That too. And new research suggests that casino workers face a higher risk of heart disease and lung cancer because they work in buildings filled with tobacco smoke.

By one scientist’s calculation, six of every 10,000 nonsmoking casino employees in Pennsylvania alone will die each year because of exposure to secondhand smoke. Imagine what the statistics must be in Las Vegas!

Scientists expect that more than 90% of the deaths will be from heart disease, with the rest from lung cancer, which is uncommon in nonsmokers. Researcher James Repace says, “The only other group that’s exposed so much is bartenders.”
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