Poker News

The boys of summer are gathered around two folding tables in 15-year-old Eric Hartman's airy living room for a no-holds-barred game of Texas Hold 'Em.

Except someone forgot the chips. Not the snack kind — Hartman's mother, Nettie, has provided those — but the betting kind that make a satisfying clatter when they're being dragged across the table after a winning hand.

''Do you want to use elbow noodles or marshmallows to start?'' Mrs. Hartman asks her son and his six buddies as she rifles the nearby pantry in search of substitute chips.

''My mom's on the way with the chips,'' Mark Grasso, a sophomore-to-be at Freedom High School, says as he shuffles the cards in a flash of blue and white. ''We're just going to warm up.

''Everyone know how to play?''

Easy grins slide across the faces of the teens who have been friends since middle school and have been playing the game in each other's homes for the past year — ever since televised poker with million-dollar jackpots and players who have become celebrities in their own right sparked a resurgence in cards.

Just deal, they tell him.

In the past, poker was the province of middle-aged men swilling beer and popping peanuts in smoke-filled basements. It was an escape from the wife and children, a chance to hang out with buddies and blow off steam.

But the popularity of the Travel Channel's ''World Poker Tour'' changed all that. ''World Poker Tour'' is the channel's most-watched program, with roughly 1.2 million households turning on their sets each week. Then there's ''World Series of Poker'' on ESPN, ''Celebrity Poker'' on Bravo and ''Late Night Poker'' on Fox Sports Net.

Networks aren't the only ones cashing in on poker's popularity. Stores that carry poker chips, cards and other accouterments of the game are having a hard time keeping the items on the shelves.

''We get them in and we just sell them,'' said Andrea Suvay, manager of Modell's Sporting Goods in Whitehall Township.

''Several times a week someone's asking for poker stuff,'' said Greg Sell, manager of the Sports Authority in Whitehall. ''We get a lot of requests for chips. We have people looking for tables, too.''

There's even a push to make poker an Olympic sport.

And why not?

Poker takes daring, guts and skill, and it's become all the rage among teenage boys.

''It's pretty big everywhere,'' said Dan Kennedy, a 17-year-old Southern Lehigh High School senior who converted a corner of his basement into a game room and painted ''The Poker Pit'' and playing cards on the wall.

Some teens are betting more than plastic chips, spending allowance and lawn-cutting money on a form of entertainment first popularized in the 1830s on Mississippi riverboats and originally referred to as the ''cheating game.''

''I've won anything from $25 to $60,'' Kennedy said. ''It's always nice not to have to take money out of the bank to buy a half tank of gas.''

Buy-ins — the amount needed to play — are usually $5, he said, and there's no shortage of places to play.

''Some weeks there's a game every night,'' said Kennedy, a lifeguard at a local swimming pool. ''It all depends on what people are doing or who's got money. I limit myself to once or twice a week.''

Gambling is illegal in Pennsylvania, and some parents didn't want their teens interviewed for the newspaper because they play with money.

But Kevin Harley, deputy press secretary for the state attorney general's office, said police aren't usually concerned with gambling unless it's large-scale sports betting or involves organized crime.

''Is law enforcement going to arrest anyone having a nickel-and-dime poker game on a Tuesday night at their brother-in-law's?'' he said. ''It's highly unlikely.''

Especially if the house isn't taking a cut, Harley said.

Sixteen-year-old Ricky Maderas said poker is also popular at Liberty High School, where students play on the sly in the back of class, he said. Most of the time it's for bragging rights, but occasionally someone raises the stakes.

''A kid bet his portable DVD player and lost it,'' he said. ''Some guys like to bet. I guess it's a manly testosterone kind of thing.''

It's hard to say how schools, which usually react swiftly to fads, are handling the pastime's growing popularity.

Students say they sneak in a few hands in school whenever they can, but several area high school principals said they weren't aware that games were taking place.

''It was really big at school,'' said Peter Cosgrove, a 16-year-old Parkland High School junior, who estimated 75 percent of the student body has played Texas Hold 'Em at one time or another.

Then someone lost a bundle of money at school and his mom called the principal to complain, Cosgrove said. After that, students weren't allowed to bring cards to school, he said.

Parkland Principal Richard Sniscak said that never happened and students are embellishing the game's popularity.

Kennedy's mother, Linda, said she's more bothered by the amount of time her son spends studying the moves of the professionals on television than what a few dollars waged during a friendly poker game could portend.

''I'll come home and he'll be watching them play'' on ESPN, she said. ''He knows the names of the players. I'm like, 'There's a lawn that needs to be mowed.'''

But can poker, despite the amount of money involved, lead to a serious gambling addiction?

Vivian Blanc, a counselor in Wormleysburg, Cumberland County, who specializes in compulsive gambling, said ''lots and lots'' of people can play poker and not develop a problem, but for roughly 5 percent of the population, the game's a slippery slope.

''It's not about the money or how much you win,'' she said. ''It's about the action. It's about placing the bet. That's the thrill.''

Blanc said adolescents and senior citizens constitute the fastest-growing population of compulsive gamblers, and a majority of her patients who are in their 20s started gambling in middle school.

''The truth is you don't normally introduce kids to alcohol and drugs at ages 5, 7 or 9, but we do introduce our kids to gambling at early ages so it becomes normalized,'' she said.

Nettie Hartman, whose Bethlehem Township home was the setting for last week's game, pooh-poohed the notion her son and his friends will become gambling junkies from playing poker.

''If anything, it's an opportunity to learn self-control under a watchful eye,'' said Hartman, director of human resources for a home health care company. ''These guys are so physical, it's nice they have something calmer to do.''

Hartman views poker nights as a good way for the guys to build social skills and have some fun.

''They bust each other's chops,'' she said. ''It's such a hard age. They don't drive, and they don't want me driving them to a local carnival.''

So why poker?

This is a generation, after all, that amuses itself by blasting video game monsters, jumping curbs on skateboards and conducting conversations in the virtual world of instant messaging.

''We get together and talk,'' said Jay Gambaccini, a red-headed Freedom High School 10th-grader. ''It gives us an excuse to just hang out.''

Leonard Green, a Washington University psychology professor who recently completed a study on the gambling habits of college students, said poker appeals to young men because it's considered a grown-up pastime.

''It's like going to an R-rated movie or doing something your parents aren't totally thrilled about,'' he said. ''There's a little bit of shadiness to it.''

Plus, males between the ages of 16 and 25 are inherent risk-takers and with poker there's always the danger of losing money no matter how great or small the amount, he said.

''Boys are much more likely than girls to play these games'' for that reason, he said.

But some girls play.

Southern Lehigh senior Julie Nadel learned as a child at her father's knee when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Now she's considered one of the best players in Kennedy's circle.

''It's nice to get together with your friends without having to go out,'' said Nadel, 16, of Center Valley, who watches the game regularly on ESPN2. ''There's not a whole lot to do around here.''

Poker's also an easy game to learn, Green said, unlike some games that require a huge investment of time to understand the complexities of play.

''With mah-jongg, you really have to know how to play,'' he said. ''With poker, it's easy and there's tremendous social reinforcement. There's lots of talking, lots of joking.''

Back at Hartman's house of cards, there was plenty of that going on.

Gambaccini emerges from the upstairs wearing horse jockey goggles so dark they conceal his eyes.

''Who wants in on this poker face?'' he postures, sitting back down at the poker table, where only four players are still in the game.

''OK, Smarty Jones,'' quips Mike Capofari, a 15-year-old Moravian Academy sophomore whose cheeks are swollen because he had his wisdom teeth removed earlier that day.

Wearing a cap emblazoned with ''Lady Luck'' and rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses, 15-year-old George Andriko plunks 10 chips in the pot.

''Oh, he's going big,'' says Grasso, the only one in the baby-faced bunch with a shadow of a beard.

''Raise him, raise him,'' Gambaccini urges.

Derek Applegate, wearing a black T-shirt and a heavy silver chain around his neck, sees Andriko's 10 and raises him five.

But their cards aren't enough to beat the flush 15-year-old Joe McIntyre spreads on the table.

''He won his dignity back,'' Grasso says of McIntyre, who sports an unruly mop of tawny curls.

In a victory swoop, Eric Hartman picks up McIntyre and dumps him on the couch like a bag of mulch.

''He got his manhood back,'' shouts Hartman, who looks like a displaced California surfer with chin-length blond hair.

The boys of summer break for glasses of iced tea and orange soda. Then it's back to the table for another fast-paced round.

The night is young, and so are they.

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