As reported by: News4Jax
Kevin figures about half the male students at his suburban high school are regular poker players. It's the latest teen rite of passage: Texas Hold 'Em with the boys, a little low-budget action on the weekend.

Kevin started playing at age 15.

By the end of his senior year, the now 17-year-old was hunting bigger games. He frequented illegal poker clubs on Long Island, where your birthday took a back seat to your bankroll. He dropped $2,000 betting during a family vacation in the Caribbean. When his job managing an ice cream shop conflicted with poker nights, he quit.

As his losses inevitably swelled, Kevin -- without hesitation or remorse -- started looting a $30,000 college fund set up by his parents. "I didn't care if I won or lost," said Kevin, who went through $7,000 in three months. "I just wanted to gamble."

He wasn't alone. This summer, while school was out, a growing number of America's teens were going all in as the nation's poker craze mesmerized a group that grew both larger and younger.

Experts fear the obsession is putting America's youth at its highest risk ever for compulsive betting -- and worry that assistance programs are lagging.

"I get calls from parents and kids, some as young as 14, every day," said Arnie Wexler, a counselor and former head of the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling. "This thing has exploded. I've never seen anything explode like this has in the last year."

Poker, particularly the incredibly popular Texas Hold 'Em version played in the $56 million World Series of Poker, stands alongside hip-hop and video games as pillars of America's youth culture. And as schools reopen this fall, the pool of potential underaged gamblers is spreading from the upper grades into the middle schools.

According to a study by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, 15.9 percent of in-state students between the sixth and 12th grades admit to gambling-related woes or signs of addiction. Four percent report they were already stealing money from relatives to gamble.

A national survey showed a huge increase in card-playing among males ages 14 to 22, with the number of youths reporting they gambled in card games at least once a week jumping from 6.2 percent in 2003 to 11.4 percent last year -- an increase of 84 percent. The vast majority of poker players are males.
Article By: News4Jax