WHAT COMMUNITY can oppose a teenage activity that does not involve alcohol, drugs, sex, fast cars or violence?
Apparently, quite a few adults object when the pastime is poker. The hobby that stereotypically attracts middle-age men with fat stogies and even fatter beer bellies is now the divertissement of choice for teenage boys.
advertisement
Party Poker
The biggest online poker room with thousands of players.
Choose one of the following games:
Texas Holdem Poker, Omaha Poker, Omaha Hi,
Seven Card Stud, Stud 8 or Better.
Receive a 20% bonus of your first deposit up to a $100!!!
Party Poker
A notoriously fickle lot, young males have helped to make poker games such as Texas Hold 'Em wildly popular. Yet they are dumbfounded by the parental furor over a diversion that reinforces math, improves reasoning skills, involves social interaction and might even be profitable. Cash-only games at a friend's house are harmless, teens claim, especially when this perennially poor group must limit bets to the cost of a cheeseburger and fries.
For these guppies pretending to be card sharks, the real danger is online poker. Although Internet sites state that players must be 18, youths find it easy to lie about their ages on the keyboard. Armed only with a credit card number and a buy-in as low as $10, children too young to baby-sit can enter a game. Each day, more than $100 million in bets passes through 200 online poker sites, according to Pokerpulse.com.
To attract the naive, Internet poker rooms mimic the Vegas Strip with pulsating letters that scream "Play for FREE!" and "25% Bonus on 1st Deposit." It's not unusual to hear of 11-year-old boys spending an entire Saturday at their keyboards praying for a straight flush, or college students winning several thousand in one night. But their losses are not as publicized.
Teens are enticed by a game that appears to require more skill than it actually does. Math-minded youths can learn the rules in 10 minutes and consider themselves experts by the end of the evening. Buoyed by beginner's luck, many forget that chance, not strategy, determines their fate.
Teens who rack up chips are gambling with something far more valuable than money. They are risking an addiction that may be harder to cure than alcohol or drug habits. About 9 percent of young people already show signs of gambling addiction, according to the 2003 Annenberg National Risk Survey of Youth.
A survey in Maryland reveals that the average gambling addict started playing at age 13. Those most at risk are well-educated, white males who are already highly competitive. The Task Force on Gambling in Maryland found that 89 percent of gambling addicts are male, 90 percent of them white.
Sadly, the dangers don't end when the last player folds. Although players may keep a clear head while their weekly allowance is in the pot, 50 percent of young gamblers are likely to binge drink and 75 percent are prone to smoke marijuana in the future, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. Twenty percent of teens who bet consider suicide when their self-esteem plummets along with their winnings, the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling discovered.
Some experts hope gambling is just a fad that will go the way of pet rocks, but many bet that the craze will persist. The problem gambling council reports that four out of five teenagers in North America wagered in the past year.
Teens study the experts in televised poker tournaments on ESPN, Bravo and the Travel Channel, and two new gambling shows, ESPN's Tilt and A&E's Caesars 24/7, debuted this month.
The winners on these cable shows quickly emerge as celebrities in the eyes of penny-ante players. Daniel Negreanu became the Brad Pitt of poker after winning the top money and the Player of the Year title last year.
To attract an even younger crowd, toy stores offer poker sets to kids who should be hankering for a pair of skates, not a pair of kings. Party planners like The Poker Guy offer an expert who brings professional quality tables, chips and cards to birthday celebrations or bar mitzvahs.
Teens who deal cards at home insist that a poker party is far safer than one involving binge drinking, drugs and sex. Even families who object to online poker find it hard to protest when a college student wins the thousands of dollars needed to pay tuition.
But as the gambling addiction rate of youths doubles that of adults in North America, the only hope for teens is to know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em and when to cash in all their chips.
Source: Baltimore Sun
