Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Oregon problem-gambling initiative targets college students
By Susan Goodwin
Oregon Daily Emerald (U. Oregon)
03/13/2006

(U-WIRE) EUGENE, Ore. — A former University business student who studied finance and investing took the entire 2005-06 school year off to pursue his gambling successes, which he estimates at more than $135,000 in the last two years.

Jordan Rich, 23, won the majority of his money playing poker online at various Web sites specializing in high-stakes poker games, he said.

Rich views gambling as a way to achieve his future goals, which include starting an investment firm with his winnings.

"Generally, I'm pretty good with money," Rich said. "I'm a competitive guy, and poker combines those two."

The lure of winning hundreds or thousands of dollars draws an untold number of college students to gamble their money on sports games and lottery tickets, at casino slot machines and card games, in cash poker games at friends' houses and on gambling Web sites.

Gambling can also be an excessive problem, part of an overall pattern of addictive behaviors leading to enormous debt and personal crisis. But the scope of its prevalence is unknown because little research has specifically focused on gambling habits of college students.

"About 1 college student in 20 has a gambling problem, but it's an issue that's very much under the radar," Jeff Marotta, problem gambling services manager in the Oregon Department of Human Services, stated in a DHS news release.

"After speaking to a student group on one Oregon campus, a student told me his roommate who gambled a lot was taking next term off because he had to work to pay off his debts," Marotta stated.

A new problem-gambling initiative financed by Oregon's lottery aims to raise awareness about the increasing prevalence of problem gambling on college campuses. It will provide participating universities free technical assistance and money to raise student awareness about problem gambling.

The campaign also offers resources for students with gambling problems like a help line number, 877-2-STOP-NOW.

For the majority of students, gambling is an occasional habit, not a problem.

A 2000 survey of 1,348 Connecticut university students analyzed in the May 2004 edition of the Journal of American College Health found that about 11 percent of students surveyed had a gambling problem; like previous studies, the rate of college gambling problems was more than double the rate for the general adult population.

About 18 percent of men and about 4 percent of women surveyed were "problem" or "pathological" gamblers, according to the study. About 58 percent of men and 59 percent of women were "social" gamblers.

More than half of problem and pathological gamblers reportedborrowing money, gambling more than intended and feeling guilty about gambling.

Playing the stock market or lottery and betting on sports were the most common activities problem gamblers engaged in one or more times per week. More than 20 percent of pathological gamblers played cards for money, played the stock market, bet on sports or played skill games or the lottery at least once per week.

A 1995 study of college students by the Minnesota Institute of Public Health identified a profile of a typical problem gambler as "male, a weekly or daily user of alcohol or illicit drugs, and someone with a relatively high disposable income and whom had been raised by a parent with a gambling problem," according to the study's Web site, www.miph.org/gambling/gmb_collegestud.html.

"Just as we've done with alcohol, we can heighten people's awareness about acting responsibly and getting help when a legal recreational activity crosses the line into a destructive behavior," Marotta said. "College-age problem gamblers lose an average of $30,000."

"Poker is like the gold rush of our time," Rich said. "There's a flood of money being dumped into it," which is why so many students are drawn to playing online, he said.

Rich began playing poker casually for fun at his friends' houses and started going to casinos when he was about 19 years old after a friend took him to one in Portland, his hometown.

Rich said he almost always lost in the beginning because he didn't understand the game or the skill involved.

"It didn't come quickly or easily," Rich said. "It took a long period of time ... I started reading a couple books, which really helped."

"I figured out that game selection was my problem," Rich said. "Game selection means who you're playing with."

Rich stopped playing the card games that relied more heavily on luck, such as Blackjack, and moved to poker, a game requiring more skill.

Many of the people he played against at the casino had an unhealthy relationship to gambling, Rich said.

"Most people are in denial when they go to casinos," Rich said. "They think they'll beat the odds."

On Saturday, Rich won $1,000 in a VIP game at http://www.pokerstars.com that he was invited to play in because he had earned enough "player points" from playing frequently and winning a lot.

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