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Wanna bet?
Answer these questions to see if you or a friend may have a gambling problem.
1 You have often YES gambled longer than you NO have planned.
2 You have often YES gambled until your last dollar was gone. NO
3 Thoughts of gambling YES have caused you to lose sleep. NO
4 You have used your income YES or savings to gamble while letting bills go unpaid.
5 You have made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to stop gambling. YES NO
6 You have broken the law or have considered breaking the law to finance your gambling. YES NO
7 You have gambled to get YES money to meet financial obligations. NO
8 You have borrowed YES money to finance your gambling. NO
9 You have felt depressed or YES suicide because of your gambling losses. NO
10 You have been remorseful YES after gambling. NO
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/JARED GAB
If you or someone you know answers "yes" to any of these questions, consider seeking assistance from a professional regarding this gambling behavior. Call the National Problem Gambling Hotline at (800) £22-4700 or go to www.ncpgambling.org.
Ryan Hulteng started playing poker with friends his freshman year while living in Oliver Hall. The Spencer, Iowa, junior had always liked to play cards growing up, so he thought he would give poker a try since all of his friends were playing. Hulteng plays occasionally on Empirepoker.com or Pokerstars.com."I've never been to a casino. I think I'd get eaten alive," he says.
The main reason online poker is so popular is its ease of use, says Thomas Hardy, director of housing and residence life at Valdosta State University and previous co-chair of the Gambling Action Team at the University of Alabama. "It is a rare college student who does not have access to a computer and students today spend hours surfing the internet looking for things to do," he says. A casino may be close, but it's much easier to go online, and this anonymity removes the fear of making a mistake and everyone knowing it was you who made it.
Hardy says.
Joey Fine taught himself to play poker, mainly through playing online. The Minneapolis senior tries to play only on big online tournaments. "The nice thing about tournaments online is that you can make a big fool out of yourself and nobody will ever know who you are, so you don't really have anything to be nervous about," he says. Fine's best finish was winning an online tournament with 300 people in it. It was only a $10 entry and he won $800, he says.
How to play
David Parlett, game inventor and historian, classifies poker as a vying game."It's a type of gambling game in which stakes are not fixed in advance, but are gradually raised until either all but one player drop out or a showdown occurs," he explains.
In Texas Hold'em, one of the most popular forms of poker
played today, each player is dealt two cards face down. This is followed by a round of betting. Three community cards, called the flop, are then placed face up in the center of the table for everyone to see. This is followed by a second round of betting. The fourth and fifth community cards, called the turn and river, respectively, are dealt face up on the table, each followed by a round of betting. Players use the two cards in their hand and the five community cards to make the best five-card poker hand possible.Various forms of betting rules can apply, but the most popular is no-limit betting, in which a player at any time can go "all in" by betting all of his or her chips.
and a lot of practice, the rules of the game will become second nature. Then all you have to do is learn to win. Sounds easy, right? You might want to think again.
If all of this doesn't seem confusing enough, rather than having each player ante a token amount, Texas Hold'em uses blind bets, which are posted by the two players to the left of a rotating dealer button. With a little patience
Skill or luck?
As Kenny Rogers sings in The Gambler, "You have to know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em, know when to walk away, know when to run." If you've played poker before, you know how much these lyrics ring true. Although poker is largely a game of skill, a little luck doesn't hurt anybody either. There is no built-in statistical advantage for any player, says Scott Golder, researcher at the MIT Media Laboratory, "Every player over time is just as likely to be dealt as many good or bad hands as any other player," he says. It's the skill a player possesses in terms of knowing when his or her hand has the highest likelihood of winning and betting accordingly. The other part of your game is deducing from your opponents' behavior how strong their hands are relative to your own. Being deceptive and detecting deception in others is a key aspect to playing poker well, Golder says.
Kevin has been playing poker since he was 9 when his grandma taught him to play. The Topeka senior says like most other games, poker has too many intricacies to completely master, but that's also what makes it fun." It even becomes a groupthink game because you're trying to eliminate as many people as possible," he says."You and your playing partners are all thinking the same thing...get ride of this guy so we get more money."
Predicting future events based on past ones and reading the body language of other players is extremely important if you want to learn to play with the big shots. For example, if you know from experience that a particular opponent bets high only when holding a strong hand, you might be more inclined to fold your hand when he bets heavily, Golder says. Body language varies among players, and is often called a "tell" in the poker world. Some examples of a tell include: fidgety hands, nervousness, changes in body posture and anxiety.
However, it's hard to read facial expressions when you're playing a screen name. Golder says this is when bluffing becomes an integral part of the game. The aim of bluffing is to make people lay down their cards so you can steal the pot without actually having a good hand to back it up. Bluffing separates those with skill rather than talent, Golder says. The key is to know when the best time to bluff is, because bluffing or folding too much will only make you predictable. But, knowing when to fold your hand may save you more money.
Michael Jensen, former KU student and now professional poker player, coaches KU
students when he's not playing by teaching them money and mind management exercises. You have to have the gamble in you, he says. "There are certain personality traits that allow you to put money on the line." Jensen says. Patience, discipline and money management skills are also required to become a good poker player.
When poker takes over
Playing online poker can start simply enough. Maybe a friend in the dorm mentions a favorite poker site and tells you the site has a joining bonus of $50, and you decide to try it out. However, the next thing you know, you're spending hundreds of dollars a week trying to hit it big. More than 70 percent of U.S. adults report gambling at least once in the past year, according to The National Council on Problem Gambling. Most adults are able to gamble responsibly, but in a given year, approximately three million adults meet the criteria for pathological gambling. Another 2 to 3 percent have less significant, but still serious gambling problems and are known as problem gamblers.
The problem is that poker is a risk-taking behavior similar to alcohol and drugs that a lot of college students choose to engage in, says Hardy, the former co-chair of the Gambling Action Team at the University of Alabama. "Since it impacts students financially as losses mount, the tendency is for credit card balances to be run high, savings to be depleted and in severe cases theft of money from friends or family to play the game," he says. Not all students will become addicted, but those that do will be left with big problems they will need to deal with.
Although most online tournaments are only $5 or $10 buy-ins, the quickness of the games allows you to play more in one day, or even multiple games at the same time. In most scheduled online poker tournaments, players pay at entry fee (buy-in), which may be anywhere from a less than a dollar to several thousand dollars. In most cases, the house gets 10 percent of what goes to the prize pool, but in some lower-cost tournaments, the house might take a higher percentage to cover operating costs. Jensen says you need to know when to slow down and how to set limits for yourself. "You have to be humble when you're starting out. If you're on a losing streak, you have to start playing smaller, otherwise you'll go broke," he says.
Rarely does a day go by when Mathew Sidarous, Lawrence senior, doesn't play a game of online poker. Since his freshman year, he has won around $3,000 from online tournaments, and he doesn't plan on quitting there. He started out playing small $5 buy-ins at PokerStars.com
CONTINUED ON PAGE 10➔
KNOW WHAT YOU'RE HOLDIN'
ROYAL FLUSH A STRAIGHT FLUSH THAT HAS A HIGH CARD VALUE OF ACE. THIS IS THE HIGHEST HAND IN POKER.
STRAIGHT FLUSH A FIVE-CARD SEQUENCE OF THE SAME UNIT.
FOUR OF A KIND ALL FOUR CARDS OF THE SAME RANK.
FULL HOUSE THREE OF A KIND COMBINED WITH A PAIR.
FLUSH ANY FIVE CARDS OF THE SAME SUIT, BUT NOT IN SEQUENCE.
STRAIGHT FIVE CARDS IN SEQUENCE, COMPRISED OF MIXED SUITS.
TWO PAIR TWO SETS OF EQUAL VALUE CARDS.
THREE OF A KIND THREE CARDS WITH THE SAME VALUE.
ONE PAIR
TWO CARDS OF EQUAL
RANK.
HIGH CARD IF THE HAND HAS NO OTHER COMBINATIONS, ITS WORTH IS DETERMINED BY THE HIGHEST VALUE CARD.
08.24.2006 JAYPLAY <09