As Adolescents Bet, More Are Having Gambling Problems

It`s hard to blame young people for believing poker is completely
harmless - for most of them, it is. But the fallout from the overall
increase in card playing among young people and the widespread
availability of games of chance on the Internet is beginning to show up
in counseling offices, and, in some cases, the police blotter.

Before this past year, state gambling-addiction programs had never seen
more than one or two patients under 18, but over the last year the
programs have helped 11 of them. A gambling counselor in central
Connecticut said he was working with six adolescents; as of two years
ago, he had no patients under 18. In Southeastern Connecticut, at least
four schools have called the local gambling-prevention center in the
last year because children were gambling on school grounds.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said his office had received an
increasing number of complaints from parents looking to recover money
their children had lost at online gambling sites. They are playing at
school, using the cafeteria to get in a few hands, and some are running
up serious debts.

In Ridgefield, the high school banned card playing after students told
administrators about the money their peers owed. And in Wallingford, a
15-year-old became so addicted to poker that after he ran out of his
own money, he took his parents` credit cards so he could play online,
lost $5,000, then broke into a friend`s house and stole $3,500.

"It started off innocent, but now my son is a compulsive gambler," said
the boy`s mother, who asked that neither she nor her son be identified.
"This is not just fun. It`s out of control."

Experts in the state said the poker craze is gripping adolescents. As
the game`s popularity escalates, they expect it to take more and more
casualties.

"On the one hand, I don`t believe the sky is falling," said Chris
Armentano, the director of problem gambling services at the Department
of Mental Health and Addiction Services, "but I do think it`s a
significant concern, and given the rapid rise of interest and
participation among young people, I think it`s just going to become
more of a concern."

The 15-year-old, a high school sophomore in Wallingford, was inspired
by the stars he saw playing poker on television, his mother said. The
woman, an office manager at a bottle distributor, said her son did not
want to comment.

"He was an honors student, but he stopped doing his work in school,"
she said. "He said he didn`t need to do it. He was going to be a
professional card player."

The casual games he played with his friends escalated until he was
sitting down to play with $250 at a friend`s house and gambling
hundreds of dollars a day playing poker on the Internet, she said. He
also gambled at school, tallying victories and losses on sheets of
notebook paper, she said. She tried to stop him, but he always found
ways around her.

"I followed my son," she said. "I went to all the parents` houses where
they held games. I took the Internet out. I was ready to cancel my
phone." The boy now attends group and family therapy in Middletown.

Kenneth V. Henrici, the Wallingford superintendent, said district
officials have not seen children gambling in school. "We don`t have any
evidence of that," he said, adding that the schools have policies
forbidding gambling.

Signs of problems have cropped up in other towns.

Last fall, students at Ridgefield High School approached administrators
afraid that their poker-playing friends were accruing sizable debts,
said Kenneth Freeston, the superintendent in Ridgefield.

"It was more than you`d keep in your pocket, more than kids had," he said, without specifying the amount.

Students were playing cards in the cafeteria, which doubles as a
student center, Mr. Freeston said, but after learning of the debt
problems, the schools banned card playing.

Ted Nikolla, vice president of the Citizens Task Force on Addictions in
New London, said he had been called by at least four schools in the
past year because students were gambling on school grounds. In central
Connecticut, Scott Guay, a gambling counselor who has contracts with
multiple schools, has treated 18 to 20 students in the last two years.

"It was nonexistent before that," Mr. Guay said, referring to his work in treating adolescent gamblers.

At other schools, including Staples High School in Westport, students
said they had not seen their friends have debt problems, but had
noticed them becoming antisocial, focusing more intently on the games
over other adolescent endeavors.

As poker has become increasingly popular, it has also become
increasingly available. Young people said they and their friends have
had easy access to games on the Internet, simply by clicking a button
to claim they are old enough to play. Once they are connected, they can
lose money to people all over the world.

"That`s a big complicating factor," Mr. Armentano said. "That`s one of
the things that makes this new: the access to Internet gambling.
There`s high-stakes gambling in your house 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, and all you have to do is borrow your parents` credit card."

That`s what happened to the mother from Wallingford. In two days, she
said, her son and his friends had run up $5,000 in debt on her credit
cards, which her son had stolen. She called her credit card companies
and the poker sites, in Canada and Costa Rica, and they erased the
debt, she said.

Mr. Blumenthal, the attorney general, said his position is that
Internet gambling is illegal in the United States under federal
wire-fraud laws, but he acknowledged that the issue had not been fully
resolved. He said his office was pushing for federal legislation that
would clarify the issue by making Internet gambling a crime.

Mr. Blumenthal said his office had received hundreds of complaints
about Internet gambling, many from parents trying to erase their
child`s debts. Parents, he said, should know that if their children
accumulate debts, they may not get their money back. Sometimes they
will have to battle the credit card company, sometimes the poker site.

"The answer is not necessarily clear-cut," he said. "But parents should
be aware that they can be liable for charges that their children put
there. Recovering anything from an offshore Internet gambling company
is very problematic."

Because adolescents can gamble surreptitiously on the Internet, their
problems sometimes go untreated until the damage comes out in other
ways. The young people who have sought treatment from the state
generally did not seek it out themselves.

"They don`t usually come in on their own," Mr. Armentano said. "Maybe
they get arrested. Maybe they get in trouble in school and their
parents send them."

Experts disagreed on the extent of the problem. Poker has become so
popular so fast that researchers are scrambling to catch up.
Connecticut hasn`t completed a study on problem gambling in almost a
decade.

A nationwide study released this month by the Annenberg Public Policy
Center of the University of Pennsylvania indicates that card playing is
on the rise among young people. The center surveyed 1,501 people ages
14 to 22 and found that more high school and college students were
playing cards. In 2004, 10.8 percent of the high school boys surveyed
said they played at least once a week, compared with 5.7 percent in
2003. And while 3.3 percent of high school girls participated in weekly
games, that was up from 1.5 percent in 2003.

Researchers disputed the severity of the adolescent gambling problem,
with some arguing that "people naturally cycle in and out of problem
gambling behaviors" at different times in their lives, said Dr. Marc N.
Potenza, an assistant professor of psychiatry and the director of the
Problem Gambling Clinic at the Yale University School of Medicine.

"We need to better understand the short-term and long-term implications
of different levels of gambling in adolescence," he added.

Much of the concern among researchers and counselors is driven by the
increasing popularity of poker among young people. When the number of
gamblers increases, researchers expect the number of problem gamblers
to increase as well. So even if teenagers aren`t flooding treatment
centers now, they will be.

"Statistically, some are problem gamblers," said Dr. Marvin Steinberg,
a psychologist who is executive director of the Connecticut Council on
Problem Gambling. "I`m not going to convince a panel of scientists that
at this moment there is an epidemic, but the handwriting is on the
wall."

The enormous popularity of television shows has driven the craze, Mr.
Armentano said. ESPN broadcasts the World Series of Poker, held
annually in Las Vegas; the Travel Channel features the World Poker
Tour, and Bravo broadcasts "Celebrity Poker Showdown." Poker sets, with
chips, cards and a felt surface to make dealing the cards easier, sold
out quickly this Christmas, gambling experts said. The sets can be
found at stores such as Toys "R" Us.

The television shows, high school poker players said, are entertaining
because they show the strategy professionals use to win. The
adolescents also become entranced by the sums of money on the table.
Playing poker is a way to become a millionaire without wearing a tie.

"Here you have these guys who have the patience and the mind that
enables them not to have a 9-to-5 desk job, and they can make
millions," said Conor Geary, 17, a senior at East Catholic High School
in Manchester who plays poker with friends regularly. But, he added:
"They`re not heroes to me. I don`t plan to play professionally."

The problem with poker television shows, counselors said, is that they
make gambling look glamorous, and both parents and children overlook
its downsides.

"We`ve had parents come in and say, `As long as they`re not drinking or
doing drugs, it`s O.K.,` " said Patricia Devendorf, the coordinator of
the Better Choice Gambling Treatment Program at the Wheeler Clinic in
Plainville, one of the five main sites in the state that treat problem
gambling. "If they`ve been getting this message that drinking and drugs
are bad for them, then they think, `Maybe this is O.K.` "

Ms. Devendorf disputed the idea that poker was driving the increase in
problem gambling. She said she sees at least as many young people who
have problems with sports betting and other forms of gambling. Often
they have more than one game they like to play.

"Very rarely do we see kids coming in with poker problems and nothing else," she said.

But poker has undoubtedly taken on a greater importance in the lives of
young people in Connecticut over the past year. At East Catholic High
School, Conor Geary said, poker has joined sports and girls as one of
the major topics of conversation.

At Staples High School in Westport, poker has exploded, students said.
Jason Zuckerbrod, a senior at Staples, said most of the boys in the
high school play poker, about half of them regularly. He said they
gamble at home, but not at school.

Students at the school have planned a three-night poker tournament with
at least 50 players starting on March 30. The tournament, which has its
own Web site, will be at the homes of three students.

Bob Vietro, an addiction therapist in Westport, said he had heard about
young people in Fairfield County stealing to pay off debts.

"I`m suspecting that it`s about to burst," he said.

Jason, who planned to attend the Westport tournament, said some
students lie about how much they win or lose and some have become so
preoccupied with the game that it makes them antisocial, but no one he
knows has fallen into debt. The most he has seen anyone lose, he said,
is about $70.

Nonetheless, Doreen Blieberg, the stepmother of another student who
signed up for the poker tournament, said she was concerned about the
increase in card playing.

"Gambling can be an addictive behavior, and if you condone it as a
parent to a child, I don`t think it`s good," she said. "It`s sort of
like condoning underage drinking."

Some state lawmakers are pushing bills to lessen the impact of gambling
on adolescents. Senator Andrea Stillman, a Democrat from Waterford,
presented a bill this year that would increase the budget for treatment
to $1.5 million, up from $1.2 million. She also said she wanted to set
aside another $200,000 to start a voluntary program in the state`s high
schools to teach about problem gambling.

"The message people are hearing is it`s perfectly acceptable," she
said. "It`s become the thing to do, that teens and college students
want to participate in. That`s why we need to educate people. If it
continues unchecked, we could be looking at a very large social problem
in 10 or 15 years."