Poker is major college craze

PRINCETON, N.J. — For Michael Sandberg, it started a few years ago with nickel-and-dime games among friends.

But last fall, he says, it became the source of a six-figure income and an alternative to law school.

Sandberg, 22, essentially splits his time between Princeton, where he is a senior and a politics major, and Atlantic City, where he plays high-stakes poker.

Since September, he says, he has won $120,000, including $30,000 in Atlantic City and $90,000 playing at PartyPoker.com, a popular online casino. Those claims are supported by his financial records.

Sandberg's is an extreme example of a gambling revolution on the nation's college campuses. Sandberg calls it an explosion, one spurred by televised poker championships and a proliferation of Web sites that offer online poker games.

Experts say the evidence of gambling's popularity on campus is hard to miss. In December, for example, a sorority at Columbia University conducted its first, 80-player, poker tournament with a $10 buy-in, a minimum amount required to play, while the University of North Carolina conducted its first tournament, a 175-player competition, in October. Both games filled up and had waiting lists. At the University of Pennsylvania, private games are advertised every night in a campus e-mail list.

Dan Kline, president of the poker society at the University of Pennsylvania, says that everyone is playing poker at his university.

"When we started this thing in 2002, about 10 people joined," Kline said. "Now when we have a tournament, we'll get 500 people responding in a half-hour to our e-mail." "It's the TV programs that are driving it," said Elizabeth George, chief executive of the North American Training Institute, a nonprofit organization in Duluth, Minn., that specializes in the problems of pathological and underage gambling.

"With gambling on TV, there's been lots of glamorization, but not much responsibility," said Keith S. Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. Sandberg, from his narrow, attic-like room on the top floor of his Princeton dormitory, can spend up to 10 hours a day playing.

Poker has become a career option for Sandberg, he says. Though he is graduating in May, he has not applied to graduate school or for any jobs.

"I'm playing this game, treating it like a job," he said. He predicts that he could make up to half a million dollars a year, just playing on his computer every day. "Even with the bad runs," he said, "I haven't had a losing month or even too long of a losing session. I think I'm a pretty smart guy, and I'm only going to get better at cards."