Parents For Poker

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Not surprisingly, the concept that poker might actually help kids has its naysayers. The main topic of discussion at the National Council of Problem Gambling's annual convention in St. Paul, Minn., this past June was the rising threat of kids and gambling. In his keynote speech, Jeffrey Derevensky, co-director of the McGill University Youth Gambling Research Clinic, called out government and private industry for the unprecedented marketing of gambling to kids--from using cartoon characters on state lottery scratchers to mainstream retailers' selling World Poker Tour chocolates. He cited a number of studies showing a link, although not necessarily a causal relationship, between teen gambling and higher rates of drinking, drugs and suicide. He estimated that there are 5 million youths in the U.S. and Canada who have some kind of gambling problem. Parents are a big part of that problem, he said. "Just as you wouldn't sit down and have a beer with your 10- or 11-year-old child, you shouldn't gamble with them, either."

Derevensky concedes that the research on adolescent and teen problem gamblers is still limited, largely because most serious addictions only begin to show once kids are living on their own or in college. The key to preventing problems, he says, is reaching kids early, not with a message of abstinence but of moderation and awareness of the risks. The challenge is to find effective ways of teaching those lessons. Last year, the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, located in the home state of casino-rich Atlantic City, developed what executive director Ed Looney says is the country's first responsible-gambling curriculum for grades K-12. The program emphasizes rational decision making and an awareness of the incredible odds against winning at casino games and the lottery. Counselors say the problem is that kids are inevitably exposed to gambling before they are developmentally prepared for it. "Younger children lack abstract thinking, so they believe that if they win, it's because they're special or because God loves them," says Brad Tucker, an addiction counselor in Peterborough, Ont.

That's why Looney wants to reach even the youngest kids with a message of moderation. "The program isn't there to say whether gambling is bad or good," he says. "We just want kids to learn how to make good choices." The curriculum remains voluntary for schools, however, and Looney admits that responsible-gambling programs like his often get squeezed out of the busy school year by higher priority subjects like sex education and drug prevention.

That leaves the job of teaching kids how to be smart about gambling to parents. "We know that poker comes along with a lot of bad habits, but so do a lot of other things," says Cindi Williams, whose son Jeff, 20, began playing poker in high school by holding regular games around the pool table in the family basement in Atlanta. Her strategy, she says, was to talk to Jeff about the risks and always make him play with his own money so that he stayed within a budget. Under those rules, she says, Jeff and his friends developed the ability to size up other people and deal with them diplomatically. "We need them to work out this Middle East thing!" she says with a laugh. "They're very good in understanding the other side of the situation."