Gambling has often been explained in cognitive terms. Although these cognitive explanations go some way in explaining why some games or some gambles are more attractive than others, they do not provide much insight into why people gamble in the first place. I propose that often people may gamble simply because they are bored, and the gambling provides them with an exciting distraction. We have recently started to study this. I report on 5 initial studies in which we induced state boredom and allowed people to gamble. We found that bored people gamble more, but also that offering alternative ways for coping with boredom may prevent people from gambling.