Keyboard Casino
Online gambling surges on college campuses.
by James O'Connor
Staff Writer
�Chicago�s only getting four points!� Justin Cleveland, a junior political science major at Hofstra said, as he scrolled through the day�s betting line on his online sportsbook, AceCasino.com.
He hadn�t planned to put any money on the game and said he never touches the Bears, but this may be too irresistible. According to the site, the woeful Bears were only a four-point underdog to Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers? It almost seemed like a mistake to Cleveland There�s no way the Bears can keep this close.
�And the over-under is 40?!� he said excitedly. �I might have to bet the spread and the under.� There is no way the two scuffling offenses can put together 40 points.
These are two locks, sure winning bets.
This scenario plays out in front of a laptop computer in a dorm room on Long Island, about ten minutes before Al Michaels and John Madden go on air for Monday Night Football. Cleveland�s sportsbook is more than a thousand miles away in the Caribbean.
Cleveland is part of a trend that is sweeping American college campuses. What once took place illegally over the telephone or in person with a shady bookie in the back of a bar can now be done securely and quickly with an offshore casino or sportsbook online. While hosting an online casino is illegal in the United States it has boomed in offshore nations. According the Heiko Ganzer, Clinical and program director for Last Wager, a problem gambling treatment program based on Long Island, the number of online casinos has jumped exponentially since he started his program nine years ago. According to USA Today, there are roughly 1,800 online gambling sites today. Ganzer said there were only five when he began.
He added that these sites appealed to the young, and the younger people start betting, the more likely they will become a problem gambler.
�Right now, 3.5 percent of young people in their teens and early 20s gamble pathologically,� Ganzer said.
The number of young gamblers has surpassed the number of older gamblers, according to Ken White, Executive Director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, Inc. �Adolescents show an even greater propensity [for gambling], double adults,� he said. White said that while 15 percent of adults place bets, about 30 percent of adolescents and young adults do.
He cited gambling websites as a reason for the surge. He also noted that as online commerce in general became more secure, so did online gambling, thus making it safer to participate. This along with college students� access to funds has made participation much easier. White said many college students have up to four credit cards, which can allow for gambling even if they do not have cash.
Young people have also taken to the excitement of proposition gambling. Propositions bets, or �props,� are wagers based on specific events during the game or the performance of specific players rather than outcome of the game or total number of points. According to White, bets are available on such trivial matters as which team will win the coin flip, which will score the first touchdown, whether a team will run the next play to the right or left. White said these bets are most popular with the �video game generation� because props offer instant gratification.
Ganzer also acknowledged the idea of video games leading into online gambling.
�There are 30 percent more young people coming in for help,� he said, �Many started with electronic games.�
Cleveland started betting sports in high school and has continued regularly throughout college. He said he is in the positive for career wins and losses although he has felt the ups and downs that are inevitable in games of chance.
One of his worst nights was a playoff game between the New Jersey Nets and Boston Celtics, he said. Boston was a three-point favorite at home and held a four-point lead as time was about to expire.
�Somebody from the Nets stole the ball and made a lay-up,� he related.
The play was inconsequential to the outcome of the game. The shot did not beat the Celtics but it did beat the spread, with the Celtics only winning the game by two points.
�I lost like $250 that night,� Cleveland said.
The spread works by allotting the underdog team free points in order to handicap the game. While it might be a foregone conclusion that the No. 1 ranked college football team in the country will beat an unranked team that no one has ever heard of, it may not be such a sure thing that they will win the game by thirty points. Thus, to bet on the No. 1 team you would have to take them �minus 30.� If your team wins by 29 points then you would lose.
The over-under is a wager that predicts the total number of points scored by both teams. This also adds intrigue to an otherwise boring game. The game may be over in the first quarter for the non-betting fan but for those into the sportsbook, it may stay interesting until the last minute. For some, this is the lure.
Brendan Payne, a senior at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass has been betting the sportsbook since his sophomore year of college. For him, the added interest of the over-under, and the chance at easy money, is his motivation for placing bets.
�I can be sitting in my dorm room with nothing to do then lay some wood on a hockey team,� Payne said. He added that he enjoys the idea of turning meaningless sports events into a night�s entertainment.
Sometimes the entertainment turns serious, though. Payne said his weekly bets are not large, Cleveland said he has about $100 in action every week. Neither is pathological, but for some online betters the ease of entering a credit card number and the lure of hitting the next bet can prove devastating.
As for the Monday night �lock� between Chicago and Green Bay, Cleveland did not lay any money on it. It was for the best, Green Bay easily covered the spread but the two teams surprisingly shattered the over-under.
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