Some gestures are so habitual that they stop seeming like a problem. Like buying a scratch card, scratching it and throwing it away: in Italy, more than 4,000 are sold every minute. And yet, hidden within that repeated gesture, something less innocuous may be lurking. In 2024, Italy's total gambling revenue exceeded 157 billion euros, with 18 million adults having gambled at least once in the past year and 1.5 million falling into the profile of problem gamblers — people who struggle to manage the time, money and impact that gambling has on their daily lives. It is in this space, between the apparent normality of the gesture and the distress it may conceal, that Bias & Games operates — an Italian startup that works on the weak signals of gambling: those small, anomalous behaviours that, taken individually, mean nothing but, pieced together, can reveal a trajectory towards addiction.

Bias & Games: from curiosity to systematic research

The idea behind Bias & Games grew from a direct experience: Andrea Azzarello, founder and CEO of the startup, has recounted how it all began when he started looking inside the bins where used scratch cards are discarded, wanting to find out whether any unclaimed winning tickets were among them. From there, he noticed a recurring pattern: some cards displayed the same checking errors, such as unscratched sections or unrecognised prizes. What seemed like an isolated episode opened up a broader question: what if those errors were not merely moments of inattention, but repeated signals of compulsive behaviour?

That question led to an analysis of more than 52,000 discarded scratch cards, which identified over 2,000 that had been incorrectly checked by players and 380 winning tickets that had gone unclaimed. The data also revealed a correlation: the more spending on scratch cards increases, the higher the rate of errors in checking them, with a peak when tickets are bought and played in bulk — one of the patterns associated with compulsive gambling.

How Bias & Games' technology works

The method starts with the discarded ticket. Bias & Games places specially designed collection bins in retail outlets for the separate disposal of scratch cards. The discarded tickets are then collected by a designated carrier and brought to an operations centre. There, they are automatically analysed using a patented method that highlights clusters showing reading errors and repeated behavioural characteristics traceable to the same player. In practical terms, the system detects, for example, how many areas were scratched and in what manner, whether any prizes went unchecked, and whether the ticket is part of a series purchased in sequence. It does not analyse the individual, but rather the recurring patterns that emerge from playing behaviour: when these signals repeat over time and exceed predefined risk thresholds, the system can trigger an alert to a trained operator or initiate a support pathway. The goal is not to "diagnose", but to create an early point of contact: identifying recurring patterns that may suggest a condition of vulnerability, often before the person themselves recognises it as such.

The social impact and the role of tobacconists

One of the most interesting aspects of the project is that it does not stop at technology. Bias & Games envisions a network involving tobacconists, local services and the third sector. The tobacconist is often one of the few figures who consistently observes a customer's purchasing behaviour: for example, according to the startup, retailers have been able to identify individuals who had played certain tickets based on analysis of the discarded cards.

In this vision, tobacconists are not enforcers but proximity sentinels — capable of intercepting distress and facilitating a first connection with the support network. In this sense, Bias & Games attempts to bring prevention into the spaces of everyday life, where the problem can be caught while there is still time to act. This is precisely where the project tries to shift perspective, as Azzarello explains: "Today, prevention in gambling is still predominantly passive: intervention happens once the problem has already exploded, often too late. We start from what everyone considers waste and transform it into a behavioural signal (…). The value, for those working in prevention, lies in exactly this: moving from a system that reacts to harm to one that anticipates it, reducing both individual suffering and the social costs that follow from it."

On a broader scale, the data collected could also help cities, health services and local authorities understand where the risk is highest and where to strengthen interventions: from listening services to community-level campaigns. Historically, the prevention of pathological gambling has focused on information campaigns, helplines and clinical interventions — valuable tools, but ones that often arrive too late, when addiction is already entrenched. Bias & Games starts from a different point: rather than waiting for the problem to surface, it seeks to read it in gestures. From a simple idea — looking inside a bin — a different way of thinking about prevention is born.