Andrea Morabito
10/17/06
NEW 305
Enterprise #3
Lehigh University sophomore Greg Hogan Jr.
seemed poised for success. He was president of his class, played cello
in the university orchestra and dreamed of a future on Wall Street. But
on Dec. 9, 2005, Hogan walked into a Wachovia Bank in Allentown, Pa.,
handed the teller a note, and walked out with $2,871.
The bank robbery was the result of a gambling
addiction that had caused Hogan to lose nearly $8,000 playing online
poker over a year. His story is an extreme case of what has become an
epidemic on college campuses across the country: online gambling.
Hogan represents just one of the estimated 1.7
million college students gambling online, according to researchers at
the University of Connecticut Health Center. They blame this figure to
students playing poker on the Internet, a game made popular by programs
like ESPN’s "World Series of Poker."
"Young people today are watching the
television programs that have gambling tournaments, especially Texas
Hold ‘Em, and they see this way of instant gratification and instant
money," said Frank Limone, coordinator of the Problem Gambling
Recovery Program at Westchester Jewish Community Services.
Wittenberg University junior Nick Vukasovich
started betting on poker games about three years ago, around the time
that the television coverage started. A resident adviser in his dorm
used to set up games of Texas Hold ‘Em for students to play.
"I sat down once and I won the first time
I played, so that kind of got me into it," he said. "I don’t
know how, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. But I won like
$30."
Vukasovich, 20, started out playing with
friends, and last year was playing in weekly games of about nine
players. He now plays at casinos on Indian reservations or in Canada,
where he is legal, and has won as much as $400 playing Texas Hold ‘Em
there.
"At first I lost a lot more than I do
now," he said. "Now I’m pretty confidant that every time I
play I have a good chance of winning against the other people because I
actually know what I’m doing and I have strategies and stuff like
that."
In addition to live games, when Vukasovich was
at Wittenberg taking classes over the summer, he began to play poker
online at sites like pokerroom.com. With nothing else to do on the
deserted campus, he found himself playing for two to three hours a day.
The excitement and action that gambling offers
combined with the fact that young people today have more time and money
available is part of the reason that college students are attracted to
games like poker, Ganzer said.
"A lot of people who have money and have
nothing to do all day, those are the people that go and gamble, because
it fills up their day," said Heiko Ganzer, president of the Board
of the New York Council on Problem Gambling.
The prevalence of Internet gambling at colleges
highlights what Limone calls ‘The Xbox Generation,’ made up of
students who have played video games their whole lives. Poker sites
provide the same kind of virtual entertainment with which they grew up.
"You have no awareness that you’re
losing real money," he said.
The accessibility of gambling on the Internet
has led to its rise among youths because it is unmonitored. The online
poker sites require no proof of age, so anyone with access to a credit
or debit card can participate.
College students are more prone to gamble in
general because they are na?ve and looking to have fun – there is a
sense that if it is OK to smoke pot and to drink, then it is OK to
gamble, Ganzer said.
"The whole thing has sort of become a rite
of passage for young people," he said. "People don’t realize
when they get into it that it can become serious."
The problem, Ganzer said, is that society doesn’t
see gambling as a problem, in large part because institutions like the
government and churches support gambling through state lotteries and
bingo games. As a result, the awareness about gambling addiction is way
behind that of alcohol and drug abuse.
"There are no warning signs for problem
gambling," Ganzer said. "There are no signs on the corner
saying ‘Gambling may be dangerous to your health.’"
Addiction is not the only problem. Online
gambling is illegal in the United States – a fact that half of online
gamblers didn’t know, according to the American Gaming Association’s
2006 State of the States report. Using wire communications to transmit
bets was made a felony back in 1961, before the days of the Internet.
Clearly the law has done little to hinder the
proliferation of gambling websites, but this summer the House of
Representatives voted to ban private sites from running casino games or
sports betting. While state governments would still be allowed to run
online gambling under the bill, it would enable law enforcement agencies
to block access to private gambling sites through Internet service
providers. If passed by the Senate, it could cut down on the amount of
gambling websites. But experts say the trend toward online betting most
likely will continue.
"It’s illegal but it’s there because
people want it and it’s accessible and that’s the whole key,"
Ganzer said. "People know that the only one that really makes money
on gambling are the people who are involved in the business of gambling…
You may win here and there but ultimately you’re going to lose.
Everything favors the house."
Source List
Nick Vukasovich
937-269-3910
Heiko Ganzer
heiko1@optonline.net
631-744-3108
Frank Limone
FLimone@wjcs.com
914-632-6433 x 11
American Gaming Association website
www.americangaming.org
New York Council on Problem Gambling website
www.nyproblemgambling.org
Assad, Matt. (2006, Aug. 17). "How online
gambling toppled student’s world." The Morning Call (Allentown,
Pa.). Retrieved Oct. 9, 2006 on Lexis-Nexis.
(2006, July 24). "Split odds on betting;
mixed message of House bill leaves a moral quandary." The
Post-Standard. Retrieved Oct. 16, 2006 on Lexis-Nexis.
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