The Swedish National Institute of Public Health in October released the results of a one-year study into Swedish online gambling and the effects of the March 2006 launch of the state-run poker site, Svenska Spel. The results revealed that the country's online poker players may be at a high risk of developing a gambling problem.
Conducted throughout 2006 by Kalle Tryggvesson, a criminologist at the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs at Stockholm University, the study of 16,500 adult gamblers found that online poker players wagered a larger amount of money than those who bet on other games and had a greater propensity to become problem gamblers, with over 27 percent being classified as problem gamblers. Conversely, only 8.1 percent of the subjects who had placed other bets online showed signs of problem gambling.
The study was the first scientific examination of online gambling in Sweden.
Tryggvesson told IGN that while his institution would not be investigating gambling any further, the SNIPH is planning a larger, more comprehensive online gambling study in 2008.
Click here to view the English translation of the study.