If you’ve ever stepped foot in a live casino, you’ll quickly notice how much time and thought has gone into the lavish decor and elegant colors schemes that exude from every corner of the gaming floor. These casinos know how to make you feel entertained through lavish layouts, exciting games and top service, but they also know how to paint the kind of atmosphere that keeps players reaching into their pockets as well.
They mostly achieve this by grabbing the attention of players on a subconscious level. This can be through the welcoming bells and whistles on the slot machines, the endless hallways to keep you lost for longer, the lack of clocks and windows to stop you from noticing the time, or the free shots of Dutch courage to make you care less about your spending decisions. Possibly the most popular of all these installations and tactics, however, is the hidden charm behind the green table felt.
Green felt games include the poker tables, roulette and blackjack tables, as well as billiards. But it’s no accident that you’ll find this color on the gambling table in casinos, and the color itself carries properties that affect us in more ways than we know.
Color Psychology
Green is associated with wealth, prosperity, ambition, success, and growth, among many other qualities. It’s also one of the colors that’s most pleasing to the human eye, and can evoke soothing emotions that make us feel relaxed and at ease.
Green is the color that most represents life, nature, safety and stability. This is why we see it as a sign to go at traffic lights; we see it on/in medical products, facilities and services; and we see it being used to promote ecology and natural energy.
Green in Different Traditions
One thing that truly appeals to players when it comes to the color green is its association with good old lady luck! The Irish consider green extremely lucky, hence St. Patrick’s Day, leprechauns and shamrocks. In Islam, green is considered a holy color, while in China, green is looked up to as a symbol of fertility, harmony and cleanliness.
The West heavily associates green with wealth and financial security, which is why bank notes and accounting spreadsheets are typically green. As it’s a positive color in various cultures and almost always related to money, it’s easy to see how casinos got hold of the idea.
Baize Material
Baize is the synthetic textured felt you’ll find on snooker and pool tables. It’s intentionally designed to look like grass, because this is how the game was played before it transitioned to being played indoors. The real purpose behind the green material is to slow the speed of the balls to give the players a more strategic advantage.
Poker tables were also covered in the same material to help the dealer slide the cards towards the players easily. In many places where gambling was illegal, the baize surface was also a means of allowing the players to write on the card table felt in chalk, and be able to quickly erase any evidence in case of interruptions from police.
How Online Casinos Use Green
Online casinos also tend to use a lot of green in their graphics and site layout. Again, this is usually represented on the virtual poker, craps, and baccarat tables, but you’ll also notice green pockets in games like American roulette, where the double zero is marked in this color.
Online casinos also incorporate a lot of red, black and gold into their sites. Gold is naturally associated with fortune, and this is why exploding coins and jackpots are an appealing prospect in online casino games. Black and red can be seen in card suits as well as the pockets on a roulette wheel — another familiar color scheme that rings with players.
Casino ‘Nose’ Best
Exuberant color schemes are not the only actions casinos have taken to boost business in the past. According to a study carried out by Wiley, players may be susceptible to the effects of smells and odors on the gaming floor too. In 2006, a Las Vegas casino conducted an experiment by releasing an aroma into a section of the slot machine area. They then compared and measured the results against the unscented section across a weekend.
Data showed that gambling activity had shot up 45.11% by Saturday, and another 33.6% on the Sunday in the area where the aroma was released. The casino concluded there to be no real change in gambling behavior in the areas that were not exposed to the smell.
We’ve always known certain odors have the ability to stimulate different parts of the memory, and we can often feel relieved and calm when we come across a smell that we associate with our childhood. Casinos will always try to manipulate our natural senses and tendencies to give themselves the advantage.
The Sound of Music
Slot machines are the loudest and most flamboyant games you’ll find on the casino floor. When hundreds of them are lined up flashing and singing in a domino fashion, it’s hard for them not to catch your eye. The exciting sounds and background music is enough to get anyone geared up for an anticipated win.
Even when playing slots online, you can guarantee that the soundtrack for the game has been specifically designed to keep you playing for longer and pumping coins into the machine mindlessly.
Master Plan
Casino operators are meticulously crafty when it comes to creating an environment that’s exciting enough to keep people coming back for more. Next time you sit down to watch the dice roll or the decks shift round a card table, don’t forget why there’s a free shot next to you, no clock to glimpse at, and of course, why the playing table is green. It’s all just part of the grand master plan.
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