The Growing Gambling Problem

In mid-October, Kevin J. H. Paik ’07 decided to call it quits—he’d tried to limit himself, but still found himself averaging seven to 10 hours a week sitting alone in his room indulging his habit.

It wasn’t alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine that had Paik hooked. His vice was online poker.

“Poker’s a pretty addictive game,” he says. “The fact that online poker is so easy and convenient makes gambling easier.”

When Paik started out, he gambled with $25 buy-in games on partypoker.com, his site of choice, playing four hands at once. By the height of his playing, however, Paik was playing the same four hands but with buy-ins of between $200 and $400—he even “dabbled” in $600 to $800 buy-ins. The need to increase the size of wagers can be a sign of a pathological gambling problem, according to researchers.

Paik is somewhat exceptional as an online poker player at Harvard, first because he was able to quit and second because he never sunk into the red during his online poker years. Other students have not been as lucky, and College administrators are starting to worry that online poker’s increasing popularity might have a detrimental effect on both the students who play and on those around them.

A SILENT THREAT

The students participating in online gambling do so quietly, mostly in the silence and privacy of their dorm rooms, according to Whittier Law School Professor I. Nelson Rose. As a consequence, the symptoms of a gambling addiction are hard to recognize, making it a difficult problem for the College to tackle. One House master, for example, says he did not know that online gambling existed until he was contacted by The Crimson about the issue.

But Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II says that online poker is “as much of a concern for us student affairs educators as high-risk drinking, mental health, [or] substance abuse.” Last month, he attended a conference in Washington, D.C. that featured an entire session on student gambling.

“As this issue becomes more understood among student affairs professionals and mental health personnel, our resources will attempt to address them,” he says, citing numerous sessions and conferences across the country. But given that online gambling is “still a new issue,” McLoughlin says, “no campus has developed a fix-all solution.”

A $6,000 PUNCH IN THE GUT

Daniel L. Goodkin ’06 says he decided to quit playing online poker last school year, and his reasons for doing so read like a full catalogue of the dark side of online poker, a game he calls “entirely anti-social, emotionally risky, and potentially consuming.”

“The decision [to quit] was the result of several facts,” Goodkin says. He suffered “some nasty downswings” and realized that “the short term earnings variance was intolerably high.”

The “deleterious psychological effects of big losses,” he says, were too intense. “Upwards of $6,000 over a few hours is a gut punch that makes everything seem pretty grim.”

“But most importantly,” Goodkin adds, he realized “that there were simply better ways to be spending my time.”

‘CASH FALLING INTO MY LAP’

Nevertheless, Goodkin says, online poker was entertaining—and lucrative.

Like Paik, Goodkin knew he could make “like $30 to $40 per hour with little chance of losing” in low stakes games. But Goodkin became drawn to the higher buy-in games, where there was simultaneously the challenge of playing better competitors and “the chance to make serious money.”

For many players, the money is one of the most important draws to the online gambling lifestyle. The Harvard poker players interviewed all say they could make consistently between $15 and $40 an hour playing four hands at once with low stakes buy-ins.

But “consistency” is a fickle thing in the world of online poker, and the gambling mentality makes the online game very different from your typical college job. Big windfalls draw students to higher stakes games and encourage them to spend their earnings on luxury items rather than necessities.

“In terms of propensity to consume, it would be far less if I had a job,” says Paik. “When you win at poker it’s such a windfall that you’re more driven to spend.”

With his winnings, Paik bought new clothes, new shoes, an iPod, a 27-inch TV, a DVD player and a snowboard—“all these things I kind of wanted with this type of cash falling into my lap.”

That type of consumption can make online poker very attractive. Goodkin says he still has second thoughts about his decision to quit playing.

“I’m pretty broke now, and wouldn’t mind having a little more spending money,” he says.

But since he gave up this substantial time commitment, he says his grades have improved, he now runs about 40 miles a week, and he generally feels happier. Since he quit, Paik has stepped up his volunteer work—to three times a week for an hour or two each time.

‘AN INTELLECTUAL EXERCISE’?

Paik estimates that at least 10 to 20 percent of Harvard students have played online poker, and that many of them might play consistently.

Will P. Deringer ’06 is one of those consistent players. He says he played about 15 hours a week before his thesis was due but planned to play about 40 hours a week after he finished his thesis. Deringer moderates a poker strategy forum on twoplustwo.com, a website for poker discussion and strategy.

“Poker fascinates me as an intellectual exercise, but it would certainly be wrong to say the money wasn’t part of the factor,” says Deringer. “It’s very nice to be able to spend time doing something you’d do purely as a hobby and to make money doing so.”

Deringer generally plays three to six games simultaneously, averaging about 200 hands per hour, and says he can make roughly $30 an hour playing with buy-ins ranging from $100 to $250.

“The amount of money that I can make playing online poker is several times larger than what I can make during a term-time job,” he says. “Though there are trade-offs,” he adds, “including the rather significant psychological cost of having no consistent expectation of earnings, and having to go to bed some nights after having ‘worked’ $800 poorer.”

Between the attraction of the money and the mental exercise involved in online poker, Deringer says he has had trouble limiting his play, despite careful attention.

“Poker has maybe had a marginally negative effect on my grades, but nothing I’m concerned about. What really concerns me is that it takes too much time away from my friends and girlfriend,” he says.

VITAL SIGNS

According to a 2004 article in the Harvard Mental Health Letter, one of the 10 signs of pathological gambling is “repeated unsuccessful efforts to cut back or stop.” A second sign of pathological behavior is “losing or jeopardizing a personal relationship, job, or career opportunity because of gambling.”

All the students interviewed also had in common another sign of pathological gambling—a “need to increase the amount of wages.” Other signs can include “preoccupation with past, present, and future gambling experiences,” “becoming restless or irritable when trying to cut back or stop,” “trying to recoup immediately after losing money,” “lying about gambling,” and “gambling to escape from everyday problems.” According to the Health Letter, “requesting gifts or loans to pay gambling debts” and “committing illegal acts to finance gambling” are also symptoms of addiction.

Pathological gambling involves showing five or more of the signs, according to the Health Letter.

About 1 percent of American adults are pathological gamblers, another 2 to 3 percent have less serious but still significant problems, and as many as 15 million are “at risk,” with at least two of the symptoms described above, according to a National Council on Problem Gambling study.

Yet three House masters interviewed says they had either never had any complaints or had never dealt with the issue.

“Unfortunately, I’ve never even heard of online poker before you wrote to me about it,” writes Eliot House Master Lino Pertile in an e-mail.

Other parts of Harvard are more aware of the issue. Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addiction established an Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders in 2000.

The Health Letter says that treatment for compulsive gambling resembles that for substance abuse—focusing on therapy. Representatives from the Bureau of Study Counsel and Harvard’s Mental Health Services attended a conference to learn more about strategies for addressing pathological gambling among students, according to McLoughlin.

‘AN EVER-DEEPENING SPIRAL’

But if students don’t actively seek out counseling, there is little the College can do.

The fact remains that students, especially students with a basic sense of the odds of the game, can make significant sums of money playing. This winter, for example, Jeremy T. Warshauer ’08 won $10,000 by finishing in the top three in an online tournament sponsored by truepoker.com. Warshauer said at the time that he would set aside a couple of hundred dollars from the prize money to gamble with.

Warshauer did not play frequently until he came to Harvard, where—as he said to The Crimson in January—“you kind of get surrounded by it.”

But since his big win, Warshauer has decided to cut back on his play. “At one point last year I played all the time—between classes, while studying, when I woke up to when I went to bed,” he says. “Now I’ve gotten busy with school and extracurriculars so I’m not really playing anymore.”

Warshauer says that he knows “tons” of Harvard students who play poker online—“almost everybody” that he knows. Warshauer says his roommate, for example, plays roughly six hours per day.

And Warshauer may not be far off. According to a 2004 study published on responsiblegambling.org, online gambling is an overlooked problem on college campuses.

“It is reasonable to expect that the growth of legalized gambling in the past decade would result in an increase in student gambling and gambling problems, including students who gamble at a pathological level,” wrote the study authors. “Pathological gamblers experience loss of control and multiple negative consequences as they chase their losses in an ever-deepening spiral. Pathological gambling in minors has been associated with a variety of negative and addictive behaviors, including low grades, and high rates of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use.”

—Staff writer Dan R. Rasmussen can be reached at drasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.