New Delhi: At 9:30 pm on a Saturday, a group of 14 men gathered on a Zoom call to talk about their addiction to online gaming.
Their videos were off, but their names were on display — Honey, Goldy, Pritam, Pravin. None of them used their surnames. “I’m not a bad man,” says someone, unmuting themselves. “I’m just sick.”
The discussion at hand was — is jua (gambling) a disease?
This Gamblers’ Anonymous (GA) meeting wasn’t for just real-life gambling. Most of the attendees are addicted to online gaming, including games like rummy, poker, and fantasy sports. And they’re losing money fast.
The Indian Premier League season, especially, is the time for betting. Cricket matches provide ample opportunities for enthusiasts to place bets on apps such as Dream11 and Lotus365. The barriers to entry are low, the potential reward is high, and the regulatory framework is weak. Along the way, more and more people across age groups and income statuses are being inextricably sucked into a complex web of addiction, debt, and new apps promising attractive rewards. What makes things even more confusing is that online gaming is being socially reinforced through shiny advertisements, which makes risking money seem kosher.
It’s a problem for everyone involved — punters, police, psychologists.
“You’ll be surprised at the ways these apps keep you hooked,” says Avi, a tech professional who was addicted to playing poker on apps. “They got me so hooked, no other avenue gave me the same kind of thrill. And I would feel like I was losing because of my own stupidity or because I hadn’t cracked a code — I couldn’t believe that my luck was bad. In reality, the game is rigged against you.”
And it all starts with the first few wins.
“You might win once in a while, which reconfirms your faith in your luck,” adds Avi. “But in the long run, there’s no faith — they f*ck you out of all your money.”
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The cycle of addiction
Over the span of six months before February 2023, Avi lost Rs 12 lakh.
Awake or asleep, all he could think of was poker. He’d wake up, place a few bets on the app PokerBaazi, get ready for work, and then check for updates again. Avi was never focused on work during office hours — instead, he was spending roughly eight hours a day exclusively on the app.
“My entire mental and physical occupation was poker, poker, poker,” says Avi. “I was always thinking of the app. I was never in tune with reality.”
Avi recognised that his pattern of addiction was resurfacing. He only began to claw himself out when it began to seriously affect his physical health and relationships. When he wasn’t thinking about poker, he was plagued with headaches and anxiety. Avi is now indebted to family and friends and has loans and EMIs to pay — as well as gastric issues, including an ulcer that his doctor says is stress-related.
“Online gambling is a trap because it’s so easy,” says Avi. “The phone is in your hand, it’s always there with you — and if you have balance in your bank, it just takes seconds to sign it over.”
At first, he was winning — and winning big. His streak of wins included Rs 80,000, then Rs 60,000, and then Rs 50,000. But he could never cash it out because the next bet would loot him. Over time, he realised he was fighting a losing battle. His confidence, health, and finances were at a breaking point.
People around him told him to delete the app, but he just couldn’t look away from it.
“It was a horrible experience. It (gambling) was all I could think of. And I couldn’t look away because of my addictive personality — I was always thinking about my losses and how to recover them. But I was also thinking about the game because it had seemed authentic, like a ray of hope,” says Avi.
In her book Addiction by Design, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll writes about what she terms the “machine zone” — a trance-like state in which addicts play to keep on playing, despite any physical or financial effects.
It’s like a personal buffer zone. Avi — and people like him — were always in “the zone”.
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Addressing addiction
“Remember, don’t use bad language while talking today,” the attendees are cautioned as the GA session begins.
The Zoom meetings are held in Hindi but are open to all; regional sessions are conducted across India.
The GA group holds regular meetings, opening each session with a reading of their literature on addiction and the 12-step recovery programme. On weekends, they hold two meetings a day — in the afternoon and at night — in case anyone worried about relapsing needs urgent attention.
The power and prayer in this GA meeting only underscore the problem that addicts face. Each user unmutes themselves to share their own story of helplessness and the way in which addiction ruined their relationships and finances. One says he was addicted to the stock market. Another spoke of his wife’s heartbreak when he had pawned all her jewellery to fuel his addiction. Yet another talked about how people around him took advantage of the fact that he couldn’t resist placing bets on the tiniest of occurrences, eventually realising he was spending his wages only on debt repayments.
And this is not a problem restricted to the middle class. The affluent struggle with addiction too — even if they don’t realise it immediately.
A Shih Tzu named Sigmund Freud runs up to enthusiastically greet visitors at Bengaluru’s Veda Rehabilitation and Wellness Center. Freud is a therapy dog trained to be attuned to the emotional and psychological needs of those around him.
He is one part of the holistic rehabilitation package Veda offers its patients, who volunteer to check into the rehab centre. Most patients come in to address their depression or anxiety issues or addiction to drugs or alcohol.
It is during therapy that they realise they’re also addicted to gambling. Therapists at Veda say that gambling is a byproduct of behavioural patterns and dependency, and most people don’t seek help until it affects their ability to function.
Gambling essentially gives players a chance to tempt fate by creating a public setting of risk. It’s like a “character contest” that allows players to display their nerve, composure, courage, and integrity, writes sociologist Erving Goffman. Notable anthropologist Clifford Geertz describes something similar in his seminal work Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight — the less predictable a contest, the more invested the players in its outcome.
And for those who can afford to be risky, the stakes are higher — and they seldom recognise it as a problem.
“People who come here are wealthy, so they don’t see it as a problem, especially because gambling is seen as a recreational activity,” says Ritu Girish, an in-house psychologist at Veda. “Our patients would only bring up gambling when they’re in debt or if it’s affecting their business or their relationships. It happens to a very niche population.”
People who are cash-strapped recognise their addiction to gambling more readily than the wealthy. It’s only when gamers start lying, stealing, and manipulating others that they realise it’s a problem. “It becomes hard to show people the consequences of gambling without hard evidence — like debt,” says Girish.
One patient only admitted to gambling six weeks into his eight-week programme, after intensive therapy addressed his other issues. He became resistant to help beyond that because of the deep shame around it.
The possibility of people walking in voluntarily to a luxury rehab like Veda to address only gambling is close to zero, according to Girish. “Admitting to themselves that there’s a problem makes it true — people would rather live in denial.”
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A loophole for police
In Bengaluru, India’s tech capital, the Central Crime Branch has an entire unit that spends most of its time looking at cases of online gaming.
While all online gaming isn’t gambling, some games require risking money — which could take users down a rabbit hole of addiction. There are a multitude of apps that are not always available on the App Store or Play Store and require special links to be downloaded directly from a web browser. So when a crime occurs, it is difficult to trace the digital footprint. Sub-bookies sell IDs to these apps for around Rs 1,000 and make around a 5 per cent commission on each sale.
Like most cybercrimes, it leaves no money trail, making it difficult to trace the perpetrator. The police are able to nab only sub-bookies — the bookies at the top of the chain of command are often abroad in countries like Thailand and cities like Dubai. If not abroad, they leave Bengaluru and move to another Indian city during the betting season. The apps are based on foreign servers and bookies contact people in India to act as sub-bookies.
And sub-bookies are often addicted to online gaming themselves — finding themselves in debt, they agree to sell IDs to others to clear their dues to the app.
This is how the cycle of addiction continues. So even if people are winning, they are losing, says one police officer.
“The law in general is weak and has grey zones,” says Sharnappa, Joint Commissioner of Crime in Karnataka. “The judiciary is very particular on games of skill versus games of chance, but since the crime itself is non-cognisable now, it’s difficult to hold people accountable for betting.”
Online gaming exists in a grey zone in India. The issue at the heart of it is the distinction between games of skill and games of chance — poker, rummy, and fantasy sports sit neatly in the grey zone as they have been declared games that require skill to play, even though they all hinge on making risky monetary decisions.
There’s a regulatory conundrum here too. While the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology came up with amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics code) rules, 2021on 6 April 2023, state governments ultimately decide on how to address the issue as gambling is on the state list. It’s why the Karnataka Police needs permission from the High Court before carrying out raids and arrests related to online gambling — it’s been made a non-cognisable offence in the state.
Jay Sayta, Mumbai-based technology and gaming lawyer, says that states prioritise online gaming as it is an issue based on the social circumstances and socioeconomic factors shaping the state.
“The main issues of whether states can constitutionally impose a complete ban on online games played for stakes even if they are held to be games involving skill and whether states or the central government have legislative competence to regulate online gaming is a matter that is yet to be conclusively decided by the Supreme Court. There are appeals pending on this issue before the Supreme Court on these issues, once the apex court gives its final verdict, this regulatory conundrum is expected to be resolved to a great extent,” the lawyer adds.
The police usually get tip-offs from disgruntled users who have been cheated out of their money by shady apps. And they’re not sure of the legalities of this either. One officer admitted to recently Googling whether it is legal for apps like Lotus365 to advertise in such a large way.
“We’re not able to go to the top end just yet,” says one police officer at the Central Crime Bureau. “We only catch the players at the bottom, and then hand over investigation details to their concerned police station.”
Regulatory grey hole
There’s a difference between responsible apps and those that are based on servers abroad.
Gaming platforms like Dream11 and Mobile Premier League (MPL) are more aware of the complex regulatory framework, even if they have to keep adjusting their regulatory measures as state governments come up with real-time rules. Addressing addiction is a priority for the gaming platforms.
“There are several responsible game-play measures and safety tools that are already being implemented by several of our member companies, and that our self-regulatory framework provides for, which are also now obligations that will need to be incorporated by companies under the newly notified IT rules for online gaming,” says Roland Landers, CEO of the All India Gaming Federation — the oldest and largest industry association for online gaming in the country.
The measures include an option for players to self-exclude from the games for a specific period of time and establish mechanisms to pre-specify the amount and time limits, which, if exceeded, will result in users getting warning messages.
“Wherever money is staked, it causes issues like addiction and financial losses, which is why governments have tried to step in,” says Sayta. “Fantasy apps don’t have as much responsible gameplay. The propensity to lose money is much higher in rummy, which is why some of the online rummy websites have tried to introduce self-regulatory and responsible gaming measures like setting deposit and time limits, sending periodic reminders to players and allowing themselves to permanently exclude and delete their account from the website.”
And industry stalwarts are welcoming the Centre’s intervention in online gaming regulation. “The newly notified rules are a welcome step towards regulating online gaming under the Indian Information Technology Act, and acknowledging the long-standing demand of the gamers and the online gaming industry,” says Landers. “These rules will go a long way in promoting consumer interest while helping the industry grow responsibly and transparently and will also help in curbing the menace of anti-national and illegal offshore gambling sites, which have been proliferating in the last few years.”
But all online games are designed to keep players hooked, not just gaming apps. Like Avi and Bengaluru Police have noticed, online gaming apps like Dream11 are not for one-time use — even if responsible, they do lure players back to play.
In Avi’s case, PokerBaazi offered weekly commissions according to what the players raked in. The longest he was able to abstain from the app was three days, but the promise of the weekly commission triggered him.
“Out of fury and desperation, especially when I was losing too much, I would place crazy bets,” says Avi. “And then it would come crashing down. Again.”
Eventually, he learned that the House always wins.
Community-driven support
Despite the effort of the central and state governments, the regulatory trickledown is slow. More and more people are stepping into the world of online gaming, aided by the constant reinforcement of celebrity endorsements and IPL ads.
The Bengaluru police referred a young techie couple to Parihar, their counselling centre that focuses on women’s and families’ welfare, over a maladjustment case. When they came in for counselling, their therapist realised that the root of the couple’s problem was online gaming.
While they were both interested in fantasy sports, the husband became addicted — and lost Rs 70 lakh. The couple began to bicker and fight and took it to the police. During their sessions at Parihar, which were also attended by the couples’ parents, the two agreed to work it out. The husband agreed to get help for his addiction. They are still together, though they haven’t confirmed whether his addiction has continued.
At GA, the conversation is still about whether addiction is an illness. The group consensus is that it is. But for them, the path toward healing is clear and community driven.
“I’ve never taken my wife to the cinema in the last 20 years. But tomorrow, we’re going to watch a movie,” says a former addict. “Last week, we went to the circus. We never had the money for all this because I used to be addicted to the stock market, and then I got into apps. But today, I’m able to do these small-small things because of this group.”
There’s a brief silence until someone unmutes themselves. “Keep sharing. We love you and need you. Even if others laugh at it, we know how much of a problem gambling is,” they say.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)