It's hip. It's sexy. It's a fixture on cable TV. Ben Affleck is king.

So perhaps it's not surprising that poker's popularity among celebrities is infecting teens. From high school cafeterias to college dorm rooms to professional card clubs, teens and young adults are playing for money, sometimes big money. Many believe they can beat the system.

Teens--mostly boys--say poker is just a cool game that requires strategy and quick thinking, just the kind of talents teachers should love. Addictions are rare, they say.

But if addiction is rare, teens playing cards for cash increasingly is not. Principals and teachers worry poker and gambling are uncomfortably close companions and that poker's newfound appeal may create new problems at school.


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"Gambling certainly is on the rise," said Beth Borgen, principal of Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights, Minn. "We're seeing it with everybody, mostly males, from craps to cards to gambling on how many steps a kid can jump up."

More than a quarter of Minnesota high school senior boys surveyed in 2001 said they played cards for money at least once a month. One in 25 said they did so daily. Those numbers are expected to climb when 2004 results from the Minnesota Student Survey come out this fall.

There's no doubt poker's popularity is rising with young people in the metro area, said Jerry Fuller, executive director of the Canterbury Card Club in Shakopee, Minn., where the poker room is packed on nights and weekends with high school seniors and college kids.

But far more underage teens say they play in friends' homes or even at school. Most say they play for cash; sometimes a lot. Teens say it's common for pots to run from $20 to $100.

At Apple Valley High School in Apple Valley, Minn., this spring, a group of some 70 teens played poker several times each week, said Chris Bentley, who graduated this spring.

Nationally, half of 14- to 18-year-old boys said they've gambled for money, according to a 2003 survey by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. Only 16 percent of adolescent females report having ever gambled. One in 10 boys said they gambled on the Internet at least once in an average month. Seven percent of 22,000 Vermont high schoolers surveyed recently reported signs of problem gambling.

Many studies of gambling show serious problems start early: one found 86 percent of pathological gamblers began before age 19. Another large study of problem gamblers in Alberta, Canada, found they began on average at 10 years old.

People who develop gambling problems usually start early, most often in their teens, as a fun thing to do with friends, according to the nonprofit California Council on Problem Gambling.

They're hardly the type most would identify as at-risk kids. Most are intelligent, social, confident and energetic.

At first, they may win big. They begin to feel invincible and bet more and more.

When they eventually lose, they gamble to win back what they've lost, lie about or hide their losses and borrow money to keep playing all the while insisting their gambling is under control.

As their desperation continues, they realize they can't win back what they've lost but continue anyway. They do anything to continue, stealing or lying to those around them to finance gambling.

Of course, it takes decades for most problem gamblers to reach this state and most who play poker or other games socially never will.

Source: Tammy J. Oseid, Knight Ridder Newspapers