The KSA also gave an honourable mention to Damiaan Reijnaers for his bachelor’s thesis on the use of artificial intelligence in poker.
Hahahaha.
For me, it looks like one real paper with really complex and interesting material received "Thank you", and two papers with obviously less usefulness (one is completely garbage - reasoning about ethics) received cash prizes.
If I were doing research in gambling, it would rather be research in mathematics (including AI) or something similar (tangible), but not this empty demagogy about ethics.
Psychology students are finding your location LOL. Gambling is an
"activity" and therefore there can be tons of fields of studies that can use this as a research topic. These includes gamblers' mentality, addiction, or even the gambling system itself. Psychology research are indeed tough since you are more onto Qualitative approach that relies more on behavioral study or case studies while the mathematical approach can be done even without observing people for countless of hours just for a single line of proof. Moreover, case studies/ behavioral studies doesn't always conclude to an answer, but rather a data to be used for a future reference, hence never been a garbage.
If I were to create one, despite of my knowledge in programming and math, I'd rather be focusing on the gamblers' behavior as such findings are way more helpful than creating a gambling system that already had been made by tons of people.