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All bets off as poker craze seems to be fading
Published: 2005-12-23
 Retailers set deep discounts for once-hot chip sets; TV ratings weaken
NEW YORK - The worldwide poker industry appears to have hit every possible inside straight, long-shot flush and unlikely full house that it could, accumulating a large pot of cash in the process.
But as the holiday season nears an end, the industry’s luck seems to be running out as boxed sets of cards and chips are discounted, ratings fade for some poker-themed television shows and shares of a poker-linked stock slump.
From televised celebrity poker tournaments to Internet gambling sites, from thronged tables at Las Vegas casinos to a weekly column in The New York Times, poker has grown into a national obsession.
Industry group American Gaming Association found the level of interest in poker rose significantly in 2004, with casinos and New Jersey and Nevada generating $152 million in revenue off the game, up 45 percent over the previous year. The two states are the only ones that track poker revenue specifically.
Yet there are signs interest is waning among some of the demographic groups who fueled the craze.
“It is a pop fad,” said Bill Thompson, author and professor of public administration at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Fads pass.”
Poker sets, once displayed prominently at his local Walgreen Co. store, have been moved further back into the store, he said.
“It may be reducing down to the niche market, which would be people in their 20s, macho-man type of people,” he said. “Parents aren’t looking to buy little sets.”
In the last few Christmas seasons, stores like Toys "R" Us did a booming business in poker chips, said Sean McGowan, an analyst at Harris Nesbit. But now chains like Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are deeply discounting the sets to move them off the shelves.
“The people who are obviously most interested in it obviously went out and did it already,” McGowan said, noting that his own school-age son, who once obsessively played, has cooled on the game. “He doesn’t even talk about it.”
Ratings for poker shows and tournaments, which mainstream sports networks like ESPN rushed to televise in recent years, are no longer growing as quickly.
“As far as we can tell, the big poker rooms have continued to grow, but global ratings for poker telecasts around the world have been seeing retrenchment,” said Eugene Christiansen, chief executive of Christiansen Capital Advisors. “The future is not going to be like the past year at all.”
Steven Lipscomb, chief executive of gaming entertainment group WPT Enterprises Inc., which owns the still-popular World Poker Tour television show, said the poker market was “still bubbling.”
“We are in what I believe to be the early stages of a very long growth curve,” he said. “If we were to be on the same growth scale that we were in ... we would be doing NFL-type numbers. And I don’t think our expectations are that we will have 20 million people tuning in.”
Some investors who rushed to capitalize on the poker craze have gotten burned.
Shares in WPT have lost more than 50 percent this year after briefly surging in July when U.S. poker champion Doyle Brunson made an unsolicited $700 million offer to buy the company.
The bid, which later expired, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“These cult fad stocks always end up in disaster,” said Ivan Feinseth of New York-based advisory firm Matrix USA, noting that the company loses money and calling the stock overvalued despite rapid revenue growth.
Unlike England, where several online gaming stocks are listed, poker has not blossomed as an area for investors in the United States, where Internet gambling remains illegal.
Christiansen said telecommunication companies based in the United States had not bought into poker rooms either because of the legal issues.
He said interest in televised poker — an important factor in the growth of the game —continued to increase globally, although at a slower pace and at different rates in different countries.
“Nothing can grow to the sky,” he said.
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It's always poker night on campus
Published: 2005-12-22
 By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
Every Sunday at 6 p.m., coast to coast, more than a thousand college students go online to compete for scholarship money in the qualifying rounds of a national poker tournament.
Others play the hot poker game Texas Hold'em in all-night tournaments, at campus fundraisers, in dorm rooms with friends, or increasingly, on the Internet.
Poker, once a pastime for cowboys in Wild West saloons but now a cash cow for cable TV, is at the forefront of a gambling craze that has swept colleges nationwide.
"The popularity of poker is absolutely phenomenal," says Elizabeth George, chief executive of the North American Training Institute, which specializes in dealing with problems of youth gambling. "It is head and shoulders over other types of college gambling."
"The word, conservatively, is 'epidemic,' " says Edward Looney, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. He attributes poker's surge to its glamorization on TV shows such as Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown and to the accessibility of the Internet and credit cards.
Half of college men say they have gambled on cards at least once a month this year, up from 45% in 2004, according to a study released in September by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. About 15% of them played at least once a week in 2005, up from 2% in 2002. Only 1.6% of college women said they played weekly this year.
Card players are more likely than other gamblers to go online, the report says. It cites a fivefold increase in weekly Internet betting since 2002.
Experts say poker's popularity is the result of a trend toward greater acceptance of gambling in the USA — from horse racing in the 1930s to bingo, lotteries, riverboats, Indian casinos and the Internet. Toy stores now sell poker sets, and public colleges offer courses and even majors on gambling and casinos.
"Gambling has become a more mainstream activity," says Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg survey. He calls it a "worrisome" trend. "Younger people are more prone to addiction than older people. Some kids who play will get hooked."
The survey found that 54.5% of young people who gambled weekly reported at least one problem, including overspending or social withdrawal. It says card players reported more problems than other gamblers. Of those who gambled at least once a month, 10% said they owe people money as a result.
This month in Allentown, Pa., Lehigh University student Greg Hogan robbed a bank to pay off a $5,000 debt incurred through online poker, according to his attorney, John Waldron.
Hogan, 19, appears an unlikely bandit. President of his sophomore class and son of a Baptist minister, he also played second-chair cello in the university orchestra and worked in the chaplain's office.
But Waldron says Hogan got addicted to poker in college and started borrowing money. "It just got him in the hole. It overwhelmed him," Waldron says. "He made a decision that just wasn't him."
"We're seeing a lot of good kids with gambling problems," Looney says. He estimates that 5% of gamblers develop serious problems.
Those seeking help are "anxious, depressed — they feel alone, isolated," says Dennis Heitzmann, a psychologist who has been director of counseling services at Pennsylvania State University for 20 years.
Many counseling centers are ill-equipped to deal with gambling addiction, says Clayton Neighbors, a psychiatry professor at the University of Washington. He says the problem is generally less understood than alcohol or drug abuse. He says college students, away from home for the first time, are vulnerable. "They are in that period where they're willing to experiment with almost anything," he says.
"We're not communicating adequately the risks," says Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "Government, which typically deals with these issues, has a conflict of interest," he says, because states profit from gambling ventures such as casinos and lotteries.
Those who've been addicted know the rush, and the risks.
"It was a euphoric feeling. It was a need, a drug," says Paul Delvacchio, 40, a married father of two in Marietta, Calif., who started gambling at age 16. He was accused in March of embezzling $500,000 from his company to cover gambling debts, mostly from Internet sports bets. He could face at least four years in prison.
College players say they play to socialize and, if they're lucky, to win a few bucks.
Jeremy Olisar, an honors student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who won a free semester of tuition in October from a tournament sponsored by Absolute Poker, says he plays a few hours a week.
"My passion is definitely music," says Olisar, who has a double major of clarinet and music performance. He bets money sometimes but says poker is not addictive for him. He likes the logic and mental challenge of the game.
"I like the competition involved," says Chad Flood, 21, a junior at the University of Minnesota. In May, he defeated about 25,000 competitors to win $41,000 in scholarship money in the second annual College Poker Championship.
The tournament's host, Lou Krieger, expects this year's final round in June to draw 40,000 students, who qualify by playing well in the weekly Sunday games. There is no cost to enter.
Flood played chess in grade school, but by junior high he considered it a bit "nerdy." As a kid, he played poker, and in high school he learned Texas Hold'em. He plays with buddies on campus, but if he's serious, he goes online. "You don't want to take your friends' money."
Before the tournament win, he says, he won nearly $4,000 in bets. He sees poker as a hobby, but he watches what he spends. "I recommend keeping track," says the economics major. "You need to know how to manage your money."
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