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Laura Sutton, left, laughs as
her sister, Lindsay, tries to
peek at Eric Toth's cards during
a recent poker night.
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Like most Tuesday nights for the
past year, University of Toledo
student Chad Yates recently invited
a few friends over for a friendly
game of Texas HoldEm.
"Poker face, Lindsay, poker face,"
Eric Toth said as Lindsay Sutton
looked at her cards in obvious
despair.
Regular poker games such as the one
hosted by Mr. Yates are springing up
more and more among college and high
school students nationwide. Texas
HoldEm, a game in which each player
is dealt two cards face down and
then five other cards are dealt face
up for all to see and make
progressive bets on, is among the
most popular.
Mr. Yates, who will be a senior
psychology major at UT this fall,
said he started his weekly game in
September, but has been playing
poker since early in high school.
"It was never as big as it's been in
the past year or two," he said. "It
wasn't on TV back then."
The ESPN sports cable channel, which
has aired some portions of the World
Series of Poker since 1994, is now
showing 22 hours of the competition
this summer. Celebrity Poker
Showdown on the Bravo cable
network stars many of today's most
popular entertainment and sports
celebrities playing Texas HoldEm in
front of a live audience. Poker
games also air occasionally on Fox
Sports Net and even the Travel
Channel.
That has some experts concerned.
They fear the high profile of
televised poker games with
celebrities such as Ben Affleck,
when coupled with the proliferation
of casinos, slot machines, and the
involvement of more states in mega
lotteries, may be helping create a
new generation of gambling addicts.
Lori Rugle, president of the Ohio
Council on Problem Gambling, said
that studies indicate that when more
gambling is available, there is a
higher incidence of problem
gambling.
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University of Toledo senior Chad
Yates ponders his hand during a
poker game with friends.
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Gambling addiction
Whether poker on television or more
casinos or lotteries directly
increases gambling is uncertain, but
Ms. Rugle pointed out that "it would
be as if we had that many hours on
TV of showing how cool drinking or
marijuana use or cocaine use is."
Gambling addiction can interfere
with work, school, and
relationships. It can lead to
financial ruin, job loss, breakdown
of families, and even suicide.
Problem gamblers become preoccupied
with gambling, often playing with
borrowed money in an effort to try
to win back prior losses.
According to the National Council on
Problem Gambling, which advocates
for services to assist problem
gamblers and their families but does
not take a position on legalized
gambling, 2 to 3 percent of adult
Americans are problem gamblers. An
additional 1 percent are
pathological gamblers, with more
severe problems.
For teenagers, the numbers are two
or three times higher, Ms. Rugle
said.
Young gamblers
While the vast majority of gamblers
do not have problems, college-age
people, especially men, are at high
risk for becoming problem gamblers,
said Ms. Rugle, who has a doctorate
in psychology.
He said a debate has been simmering
among those who treat gambling
problems in communities over whether
the teens will grow out of gambling,
or whether they will remain at
higher risk as they move into
adulthood.
The national Problem Gambling
council says that adults seeking
treatment for problem gambling often
began gambling as adolescents.
Judith Wilkinson, director of UT's
University Counseling Center and
Ph.D. psychologist, said it is
possible that youths who start
gambling through regular penny- and
nickel-ante games will continue to
gamble and soon contribute to an
increase in gambling among adults.
The center has seen only a handful
of students for gambling problems,
she said, but she believes more such
students are out there.
"Unless there's some disruptive
behavior that occurs, they're not
going to just come in on their own
because they don't see it as a
problem," she said.
Lori Zientara Edgeworth, UT's
director of student judicial affairs
and Greek life, said there have been
few gambling problems on campus. The
sorts of problems that occur most
often are fights over who owes how
much money, usually from students
playing basketball.
If the interest in games such as
poker continues to increase and
students play for more money, "there
will be issues that will arise," she
said.
For Mr. Yates and his friends, the
$5 or so at stake in their
Texas HoldEm
poker game doesn't matter. They play
largely to take a break from school
and work.
"No one I know actually cares about
the gambling part," Miss Sutton
said.
Yet interest in gambling, especially
in lotteries and at casinos, has
been rising, according to a two-year
study completed in 1999 by
researchers at the National Opinion
Research Center at the University of
Chicago and others. The results of
the study were reported to the
National Gambling Impact Study
Commission.
Since an earlier national survey in
1975, the ratio of adults who said
they never gambled dropped from 1
out of 3 to 1 out of 7.
State lotteries
From its beginnings in 1974, the
Ohio Lottery has grown to include
four statewide drawings, some twice
a day, six days a week. In 2002,
Ohio joined with Michigan and other
states in the multi-state Mega
Millions lottery. Last year, sales
for all the games combined were $183
per person.
Efforts to legalize casinos and
slots in Ohio have so far failed.
Voters rejected constitutional
amendments to permit casino gambling
in 1990 and 1996. The most recent
effort in a five-year fight to get a
statewide referendum on the ballot
to allow video gambling at the
horse-racing tracks failed in May.
But Ohioans do not have to go far
for gambling opportunities.
Three casinos have opened in Detroit
in the past several years, bringing
in more than $1 billion in revenue
each year since 2001. Their total
annual revenue increased by 12.24
percent from 2001 to 2003, according
to records the casinos must submit
to the city .
Earlier this month, Pennsylvania
legalized slot machines and expects
to place up to 61,000 at 14 sites,
mostly racetracks.
In 1996, taxpayers nationwide
reported a total of $8.2 billion in
gambling earnings, according to the
Internal Revenue Service. In 2001,
the most recent year available, they
reported $17.1 billion. Gambling
losses also rose, from $3.8 billion
in 1996 to $10 billion in 2001.
The National Council on Problem
Gambling maintains that the
availability of gambling does not
necessarily cause problem gambling
any more than a liquor store creates
an alcoholic. But because a casino
or lottery creates an opportunity to
gamble, the proliferation of those
opportunities worries some.
The University of Chicago study
showed that people who live within
50 miles of a casino have twice the
rate of problem gambling of people
who reside between 50 and 250 miles
away.
Ms. Rugle said that areas with more
slot machines tend to have more
women and seniors with gambling
problems.
Felicia Massarsky, a former casino
executive who lives in New Jersey,
said her 82-year-old mother
developed a gambling problem after a
riverboat casino opened 15 minutes
from her home in Peoria, Ill.
Although her mother had always
gambled, when playing slots required
her to fly to Las Vegas, it was only
a harmless pastime.
"It's a lot different when it's in
your backyard," Mrs. Massarsky said.
She said that since the casino
opened near her home in the early
1990s, her mother has tried to stop
gambling, attending a few Gamblers
Anonymous meetings and barring
herself from the casino for six
months.
Mrs. Massarsky - who in the 1980s
managed the blackjack tables at
Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las
Vegas, home of the World Series of
Poker - said she would like to see
state-sponsored gambling repealed
because of the trouble gamblers can
get into.
"I think the proliferation of
gambling has made it a lot easier"
to become addicted, she said.
Slot machines
She is especially concerned with
games such as slot machines that
make it easy for people to lose an
entire paycheck in an hour.
When she worked at the casino,
employees were allowed to play slots
on their breaks, and in 20 minutes
would often lose 50 to 75 percent of
the money they made that day, Mrs.
Massarsky said.
Problem gamblers play for the thrill
and do not realize the financial
trouble they can get into, said Rick
F., one of four people who monitor
the local Gamblers Anonymous
hotline: 419-327-9514.
"Now they watch this poker stuff on
TV, and when they get hooked in on
the Internet" they can easily rack
up credit card debt gambling online,
he said.
"They don't care," he said. "They
want to be a big shot."
While Mr. Yates and his college-age
friends play poker in one part of
West Toledo, members of Gamblers
Anonymous meet every Tuesday at the
Hampton Park Christian Church on
Monroe Street, just down the hall
from a Bible study group.
Of the 10 people at the Gamblers
Anonymous meeting last week, some
have been clean for six months, some
for a decade or more. Some spent
time in jail.
They gather for support in fighting
the addiction. Some agreed to speak
with The Blade only if their last
names were withheld to protect their
identity.
Gambling, Monte M. said, is like
losing 30 games of tennis to Serena
Williams and expecting to come back
and win the 31st.
Tom H., who last gambled in 1989,
agreed. He said compulsive gambling
is tough to beat because the
gamblers always think they'll come
up with a way to win.
"Compulsive gambling is the hardest
addiction to quit in the world," he
said.
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