Gen Y: The poker generation

I guarantee that if you went around and randomly asked 20 Princeton students what Doyle Brunsen, Pocket Rockets and "the flop" have in common, everyone would know. My generation has definitely cast itself as the poker generation. From the bestselling "Taking Down the House," to watching Chris Moneymaker on the ESPN televised World Series of Poker, to Matt Damon's over-quoted "Sorry John, I don't remember," Texas hold-em has, seemingly overnight, become one of the most popular collegiate pastimes. In the past few years, poker has risen from the dead of antiquated smoke-filled pool halls to become indisputably "cool."

Poker is cool in the way Paul Newman is in "The Sting" when he takes down Robert Shaw, or cool in the way George Clooney holds his pocket aces in "Oceans 11." Poker is cool in the way you get to wear sunglasses inside and use expressions like "full house" and "Fifth Street," and cool in the way an expensive chip or a crisp ace feels between your fingers. I am terrible at poker, and yet I can't seem to get enough of it. I can't shuffle, I can't bluff, I bet big when I have no business still being in the hand, and yet every time I hear of a poker game I jump at the chance to lose $20. I am always glued to the "Rounders" philosophy of "you can't win what you don't put in the middle." Poker is a smart, exciting, skillful, frustrating and addictive game, and fast becoming a national collegiate phenomenon.

But is the "cool factor" becoming a problem? Are the dangers of gambling, the evil lurking behind the smooth soundtracks and trendy catchphrases, a real problem for college-age students? A New York Times article published on March 14, titled "Ante Up at Dear Old Princeton: Online Poker Is a Campus Draw," unflatteringly chronicled the extreme gambling of a handful of Princeton seniors, and the amazing success of 22-year-old senior Michael Sandberg, who says that since September he has won $120,000, including $30,000 in Atlantic City and $90,000 playing at PartyPoker.com (the online casino regulated by the government of Gibraltar). The Times described Sandberg as an extreme example of the "gambling revolution on the nation's college campuses . . . one spurred by televised poker championships and a proliferation of Web sites that offer online poker games." The article pointed out that this poker addiction has spread through campuses across the country, citing enormously popular games at Columbia, U-Penn and the University of North Carolina.

While Princeton has no explicit rules about gambling on campus — except the New Jersey State law that forbids online gambling — and has not as yet taken steps to address it, Hilary Herbold, the associate dean of undergraduate students, was quoted as saying that "this is something we, the administration, need to sit down and decide if there should be a uniform policy about it." While the administration has been known to break up group games at the Street, and has a policy of treating students with gambling problems, it has for the most part kept its nose out of this faction of the Princeton social subculture. While last year students took it into their own hands to curb the surge in gambling when Tower banned poker games that involved "large exchanges of money," the grapevine still speaks of legendary poker games that start in the afternoon and creep into morning, seeing hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars pass across expensive felt tables.

This is one of those situations in which the administration would be best advised to keep its distance and trust the student body to play the game with the innocent intentions of passing time with friends. While there will always be the Michael Sandbergs who choose poker at the Mirage over graduate school after Princeton, the majority of the student body plays poker with the same philosophy that they would a pickup basketball game. While the easy accessibility of online gambling has certainly begun to tempt the eager gambling voice in the head of many a casual poker player, the overwhelming majority of the student body, I have faith, are smart enough to understand when they simply can't afford to keep playing. It would be a dark day in my life if I were to make that fateful phone call to my father explaining how I had just gone on "tilt" and emptied out my/his bank account to satisfy my gambling addiction. Princeton poker games and online gambling aren't going anywhere, and my advice for the administration would be to keep their distance; I plan on getting good grades and going to grad school, but for right now I'm going all in on in my Jack, nine suited. Chris Berger is a history major from London. He can be reached at cberger@princeton.edu.