All In

Fluorescent bulbs cast an ethereal glow on a sterile West Campus commons room. It’s Friday night, and the books and graphing calculators have been stowed away in exchange for cans of Natural Light and a pack of Parliaments. Eleven guys all crowd around a single, circular table.

The clicking of chips and the light rustle of cards are the only noises to break up the nervous silence. Aromas of spilt beer from parties past mingle with the plume of cigarette smoke that hovers above the players’ heads. Conversation is light or non-existent as the young men utter only what the rules of the game demand. Restless glances volley back and forth across the table as each player gauges his opponent. They are friends, but also rivals. Each has paid his way in, but only a few will walk away winners.

This scene has become increasingly common at Duke over the last couple of years. The game is no limit Texas Hold-Em, and this popular variation of poker has achieved national notoriety thanks in no small part to the success of television programs on ESPN and Bravo, as well as films such as Rounders and Shade. And even though it’s against the law in the state of North Carolina, from Edens to Kilgo to Few and all the way over to East, the poker phenomenon has its grasp on Duke’s campus.

Texas Hold-Em, for all intents and purposes, is a simple game. Each hand begins when the two players to the dealer’s left put in their blinds, a fee required to play the hand. Two cards are dealt face down to each player, and players must decide whether to bet the value of the blind on their two cards, raise the bet, or fold. After this initial betting comes the flop—three cards are dealt face up in the center of the table. Each player uses the three community cards, along with their original two, to reassess the strength of their hand and bet once again. The dealer then places another community card, called the turn, face up at the table’s center. A third round of betting ensues after which a final community card, the river, is dealt face up. At this point each player considers his own two cards, of which only he knows the value, as well as the five community cards on the table. Using these seven cards, each player must create the best poker hand possible. A final round of betting concludes the action before those players still remaining in the hand reveal the buried cards in their hands.

For Jason*, a sophomore, the appeal of Hold-Em lies in the game’s simplicity. “[Hold-em] is easy to learn,” he says. “There isn’t a lot of difference between a great player and mediocre player. No one is going to completely dominate.”

Understanding the intricacies of the table becomes a major factor in game play as the competition level increases. But it is the luck inherent in any game of cards that keeps the playing field level in casual games. New players can sit down, catch some nice cards and walk away with money in their pockets. “In the short term, luck can really handicap the better players,” Jason says. “But in the long run, a better player will always win out.”

Alex, a senior, plays Hold-Em in a weekly game. “It’s something some of the [fraternity] brothers had been doing for a couple of years. But then with the games on TV, the popularity of Hold-Em took off and now everyone wants to play,” he says. For the guys in the fraternity, the games are more about socializing than anything else. “Even if you lose your money, at least you were spending time with friends,” Alex says. “Ten bucks to play some poker with the guys is better than getting a couple of beers at Charlie’s and talking to people you don’t really know.”

When Mike, now a senior, was introduced to Hold-Em as part of a rush event, he enjoyed the competition. “People like to play because it’s competitive. It’s no different from kids playing pick-up basketball at the gym. Poker helps get that competitiveness out,” Mike says. He was also attracted by the skill he found in poker. “To be very good you need to study and learn the game much in the same way you would chess,” he says.

When she’s not getting schoolwork done at the Alpine Atrium or grading papers as a teaching assistant for Electrical Engineering 61, Creason has had the opportunity to jet all over the country and the world, traveling with Bloch to poker events. “It’s crazy because one week I’ll be at Duke, with no money, eating soup and McDonald’s. The next week I’m in Paris,” she says. Traveling with the World Poker Tour this summer, Creason even got the chance to play at the exclusive Aviation Club of France. She lost.

Bloch has been a professional gambler at some level since his undergraduate days at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After earning his masters in electrical engineering, Bloch got into professional gambling when he devised a system to gain a substantial advantage in the casino game Hickok, another variation of poker. He organized a team of MIT students to play using the new system, and the group’s success convinced casinos to change the rules of the game. Subsequently, Bloch would play with the MIT blackjack team in Las Vegas and pay his own way through Harvard Law School by playing blackjack at the nearby venues, including Foxwoods.

Bloch’s involvement with poker stretches beyond the casino table to the realm of the world wide web, where he plays most often at FullTiltPoker.com. In fact, both Bloch and Lederer, as well as other famous poker personae—such as Phil Ivey and Chris Ferguson—helped design the site and can also be found playing there at virtual poker tables. Creason, although not officially affiliated with the site, has become an advocate, wearing FullTilt gear out to poker events. It would also not be surprising to find her sitting at a game. With Bloch’s backing, she played often last summer, but says she had to give it up. “Otherwise, I’d never go to class.”

At Duke, where undergraduates often take their enjoyment of poker off-campus via casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City or on American Indian Reservations, students are getting their poker fix more commonly online. Sites like PokerStars.com, PartyPoker.com or PokerRoom.com offer the opportunity to play Texas Hold-Em as well as other poker varieties. Most sites allow gamblers to use fake money, but many Duke students are taking to the web to put their precious dime on the table.

Jason has been playing online since second semester of his freshman year. After class, he would often grab a sandwich and head back to his dorm room to win several hundred dollars on his lunch breaks. Playing mainly at PokerStars.com, Jason spent about an hour a day at online sites last semester. This summer, though, he took the game a little more seriously. “I considered it as part time work. It’s a grind,” he says. “I spent between 15 and 20 hours a week this summer just playing online.” Jason estimates his total online winnings at just over $30,000.

Zhong, a senior, got into online poker after learning Hold-Em freshman year. “I lost about a thousand over a week first semester junior year,” Zhong says. “I took a couple of weeks off over winter break, but went back cause I needed some money. I won $2000 at a multi-table tournament, so now I figure Party Poker and I are even.”

Whether students are betting high stakes online or just playing a couple hands with friends, the legal issues surrounding poker are usually not high on players’ minds. And although gambling is illegal in North Carolina, loopholes allow for groups to organize fundraisers like church bingo or PTA raffles, or to make payouts in the form of gift certificates. “There are illegal games everywhere,” Bloch says. “It depends on location, amount of buy-in, rake, etc. There are a lot of work-arounds.” In the end, it’s often a situation of the law just having more important things to do with their time.

Here at Duke, administrators are not yet concerned about the prevalence of Texas Hold-Em on-campus. “It hasn't risen to my radar screen,” Larry Moneta, vice president of Student Affairs, wrote in an e-mail. “Though in the past and on other campuses I had occasion to see many students get into trouble with Internet gambling… and situations like that.”

After his summer of online gambling, Jason admits he looked into the “legal stuff,” but found that the laws weren’t always clear in a lot of places. “As far as I know,” he says, “I’m not breaking the law.”

As a bar-certified lawyer, Bloch agrees that the laws surrounding online gambling are “murky.” For those involved with Internet gambling, age limit is often the legal issue. Although most sites use 21 as the legal age, some still allow anyone over 18 to play. But Jason sees age verification as a joke, noting that getting clearance to an online gambling site is extremely easy.

Regardless of the law, though, Bloch sees a problem “with younger people playing poker and acquiring debt. Financial trouble can often ruin futures,” he advises. “We don’t know how long [the poker boom] is going to last. Finish school now.”

Jen urges young players not to make the mistakes that her uncle Howard made. “He lost for ten years [after dropping out of college]. It’s a hard life,” she says.

For now, independents and selectives alike will continue to gather in their living spaces. Sidling up to the table, each player hopes of catching that full house on the river to win the big pot. And while the legal issues of gambling in North Carolina and in the mercurial and tenuous realm of cyberspace remain foggy, the chips continue to splash the pot and the cards continue to fall across the Gothic wonderland.