It begins with the buy-in, and nobody is buying into the poker craze more religiously than college students. The payoffs -- and losses -- are staggering
"Me and my buddy Pete, we played two days nonstop over winter break. First we hit the Hard Rock Casino [in Hollywood, Fla.] around 9 p.m. We entered a multitable no-limit [Texas hold 'em] tournament with a $65 buy-in that went from 11 at night until 7 a.m. with about 200 players. I won. Then we went to a cash game at a guy's house. Then back to the Hard Rock. Then back to the cash game. We maybe got one hour of sleep the whole time. But I won about eight grand. Two days of mayhem."
-- Gabe, junior, Central Florida
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The next hand, when you are playing no-limit Texas hold 'em, never comes soon enough. It doesn't matter if you just mucked 2-7 offsuited before the flop or if you went all in with a set of cowboys on the river. Doesn't matter if you just suffered a bad beat ("I had a boat, queens high, and he comes over the top with quad 6s") or if you had the nuts. Doesn't matter if you are staring at your first hole cards of the day on Partypoker.com or if, like Gabe -- who, like most of the students interviewed for this story, did not want his last name used -- you are in the final hour of a two-day Rounders-esque rampage. Nothing matters but the next hand.
"The last five days I've been playing online all day long," says Keith, a Central Florida junior. "Seriously, I haven't left my apartment. If I'm losing, I've got to keep playing to recoup. If I'm winning, I've got to keep playing because I'm hot."
And that is why the undergrads in the weekly $100-buy-in game at Duke's Wayne Manor play with two decks: so one can be shuffled while the current hand is being played. That is why Grayson, a sophomore at Florida, plays four hands simultaneously on Partypoker.com. That is why James, a student at Creighton, plays on his laptop in class.
"You don't understand," says Tom, an Indiana junior who asked that his real name not be used. "Right before you flop a hand, before you win, when you know you've got the nuts [an unbeatable hand], that's the greatest rush in the world."
"i'll play 1,500 hands online in six hours. no big deal. i chat online or watch tv at the same time. how much homework do i do while i'm playing hold 'em? too much. last week i basically wrote a 10-page paper for my politics in film and fiction course while playing two hands at a time."
-- GRAYSON, SOPHOMORE, FLORIDA
There are 2,598,960 specific hands in poker, and it's a good bet there are as many tales on college campuses relating to the phenomenon of no-limit Texas hold 'em (the game you've seen played on the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour and ESPN's World Series of Poker as well as in the 1998 film Rounders). In the past two years hold 'em has become the most popular pastime in the halls of higher education since procrastination.
Jason, a Duke sophomore, spent part of his spring break last month in Vienna participating in a European Poker Tour event that had a 2,000 euro ($2,800) buy-in; he placed 100th out of 300 players. Last summer Jason won $60,000 playing both online and in poker rooms in his native New York City. And yet he once wrote an e-mail to his Wayne Manor buddies informing them, almost giddily, that "I just lost $6,500 in 92 minutes."
Poker clubs run the gamut from those with formal affiliations -- the Penn Poker Club receives an average of $1,000 per semester from the university's Student Activities Council -- to thousands of informal ones scattered across college campuses. "A lot of times we play twice a day," says Eric, an Indiana sophomore and member of the self-proclaimed Poker Crew. "I just played 20 minutes ago. I even play against my accounting professor."
Dan Kline, the Penn Poker Club president, is stunned at how swiftly the group he founded only two years ago has grown. "We announced a poker tournament last year," says Kline, "and within an hour we had 500 people on our Listserv trying to sign up for it."
Red-hot. Poker. But why now? And why on campus?
"You're never on the sideline, like in sports," says David Williams, who left Southern Methodist last summer with a 3.91 GPA after finishing second (and winning $3.5 million) in the World Series of Poker (WSOP). "There's constant action. That's what people love."
HOW ELSE COULD I AFFORD TO SKIP CLASS?
-- SLOGAN ON THE FRONT OF A T-SHIRT SOLD BY THE ILLINOIS POKER CLUB
It's a Thursday night just before spring break on the campus of Duke. In a common room in the basement of Wayne Manor, a foosball table sits unloved. A few feet away 10 male undergrads gather around a handsome eight-foot circular Blue Devil-blue table, engaging in a mesmerizing choreography of cards, chips and hand motions. An 11th student, a TA, sits just outside their orbit, grading papers as he waits patiently for a spot to open.
Kyle raises $30. The bet goes to Charlie, who asked that his real name not be used. Charlie goes all in.
Kyle: "How much is it, then?"
Charlie: "Sixty-six more to you."
Kyle: "Damn."
Dave: "That's a pretty nice date with your girlfriend, Kyle. If you call and lose, I'll take her out."
Kyle folds, wisely. He was holding Siegfried and Roy (a pair of queens), whereas Charlie had cowboys (two kings). Kyle loses, but like every other Dukie at this table, he's no loser. Eight of the 10 players here scored higher than 1,500 on their SATs. Four are current or former varsity athletes.
Shortly past 3 a.m., after eight hours, the game breaks up. Flounder, who asked that his real name not be used, hits pocket rockets (pair of aces) on the flop and wins a $133 pot.
Eric: "What time is it?"
Charlie: "I've got 3:10 a.m."
Eric: "Oh, damn, I still have to write a paper."
"EVERY RETARD WHO WATCHED THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER ON TV AND THOUGHT, THAT'S REALLY COOL, I WANT TO PLAY POKER, IS ON PARTYPOKER.COM. SO YOU HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING."
-- ANDY MCCLURE, ALABAMA DROPOUT, TO THE CRIMSON WHITE
Blame it on Moneymaker. In 2003 the aptly named Chris Moneymaker, then a 27-year-old accountant, won the WSOP in stunning fashion. He bypassed the $10,000 buy-in by winning a $39 online satellite tournament. Then Moneymaker, who had never played a game in person before arriving in Las Vegas, outlasted 838 of the world's top players in the WSOP, taking home $2.5 million.
"[College students] are watching people like Moneymaker, and they don't think he's any better than they are," says Barry Shulman, publisher of Card Playermagazine, which just launched a college edition. "And the chance to win two, three million dollars? That's life-changing."
Now every college kid with a chip case and a working knowledge of the term pot odds aspires to shake his Moneymaker. It is not uncommon for college students to spend 30 hours per week on one of the 250-plus Internet poker sites -- probably more time than they spend studying.
"I'm not going to lie and say I'm not addicted," says Grayson, the Florida student. "But then it's hard to say that anything you [can] make money at is an addiction."
That may be true, says Lou Krieger, author of Poker for Dummies, "but it's also easy in college to lack the perspective to be in touch with reality."
"ON A TYPICAL NIGHT ONLINE I'LL START OUT WITH $100. I'LL PLAY UNTIL I LOSE. I'LL LOOK AT THE SCREEN, TEARS IN MY EYES, AND THINK OF ALL THE THINGS THAT I NEED MONEY FOR. SO I PLAY AGAIN, PUT IN ANOTHER $100."
-- TOM, JUNIOR, INDIANA
Tom, who has lost more than $100,000 (and is currently down $55,000) since his senior year in high school, has a ritual. He plays alone in the bedroom of his off-campus apartment. The lights are off. The door is locked. He does not eat, does not answer the phone, does not even go to the bathroom. He plays one song, Such Great Heights by the Postal Service, over and over. And he loses. "Ridiculous amounts," he says. "I'll gamble $400 a day, play 12 hours a day."
For Tom, hold 'em is a symptom, not the disease. He once lost $600 in one afternoon playing H-O-R-S-E. He lost $1,500 the very first weekend he signed up at Paradisepoker.com, a site from which he is now banned. He even lost $500 one day at OTB (Off Track Betting), "and I don't even know anything about horses. I just need to gamble."
"I'm compulsively addicted to making money," Tom says without a trace of irony. "That's where it all stems from."
But where has it all led? His credit rating shot, Tom cannot even open a checking account. He is maxed out, not only on his own plastic but also on five credit cards belonging to two "investors" in his ticket-scalping business. "I'm not taking their calls," he says, "because I can't pay off their cards.
"The hardest part?" he adds. "I'm always scared, always depressed and sad. I ruined my life. I messed up my life, my academics, my friendships. Just don't gamble. Don't do it."
Students obviously are ignoring that message. "With gambling on TV, there's been lots of glamorization but not much responsibility," Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, told The New York Times. "The administrations don't do a good job of telling students how to get help."
Oddly enough, that's because many administrators consider no-limit hold 'em a harmless diversion rather than a sinister scourge. "My office is O.K. with it," Larry Moneta, Duke's vice president for student affairs, told the school paper, The Chronicle. "I don't see us taking a stand to prohibit fun, entertaining activities."
Two hours after my interview with Tom, he sits down with the Poker Crew for a $40-buy-in game of no-limit hold 'em. Within half an hour his chip stack disappears. Tom buys in again for another $40. The losses mount, and he plays badly and imprudently, trying to recover from a bad beat all at once. Within 15 minutes he is busted.
Tom sighs heavily and pushes himself away from the table. "I lost everything," he says. "That's the end to every gambling story."
"YOU CANNOT BE DUMB AND BE GOOD AT POKER."
-- KEITH, STUDENT, CENTRAL FLORIDA
Tom may be one of campus hold 'em's biggest losers, but plenty of students win. Big. And the players sitting behind those tall stacks of chips all have one thing in common, it seems: brains.
Grant Coombs, a Washington and Lee senior, won $15,000 in tuition money last year in the inaugural College Poker Championship. Coombs, who is already on an academic full ride, plans to use the money for law school. Then there is Alabama's McClure, who earned $18,000 playing poker online in the first two months of this year. Despite being on a full academic scholarship, McClure dropped out of school in February. "Every hour I spend in class is $70 I'm not making playing poker," McClure, who was a sophomore, told the school paper, The Crimson White.
John Stolzmann understands that sentiment. In January, Stolzmann, a Wisconsin senior with a 3.5 GPA, won $1.4 million after finishing first at a tournament in Tunica, Miss. He turned pro.
"By winning I got invited to a lot of World Poker Tour events, with my buy-in exempted, for the next three years," says Stolzmann. "I couldn't really justify missing that much school to play in those events, but I couldn't really justify missing those events, either."
At the head of the class is Williams, who like McClure and Stolzmann is no longer in class. "My biggest fan base is college and high school kids," says Williams. "I wish them all the luck, but I don't want to be a bad influence, either. Most people cannot make a living playing poker."
"I'm not a genius," says Stolzmann, who played thousands of hands on a computer program (Turbo Texas Hold 'Em) before he ever played with cash at stake. "I just studied the game. I know so many college kids who think they can play -- and they can't."
Yet it isn't called "smart luck," is it? "I like to believe there is a direct correlation between intelligence and success at poker," says Penn's Kline, "but there's this one kid in our club who constantly seemed to be losing. Then he won $87,000 on Partypoker.com."
Which is why, when it comes to wagering on whether campus poker is a fad or a fixture, all bets are off.
Source: Sports Illustrated CNN
