Almost two years ago, Dwight Lee celebrated his twenty-second birthday with a trip to the Seneca-Niagara Casino in Niagara Falls, New York. He walked in with $200 in his pocket. He walked out with nearly $6,000 in roulette winnings. It was his first big win. Within a week, he’d lost it all at the very same establishment, playing the very same game of chance.
Soon after gambling away his birthday winnings, Lee lost an additional $1,200 in one evening at the roulette table; again at the same casino. This time, however, the money was his, not the casino’s.
“I went in with like $200—lost that. Played for like another $200—lost that. …come close to getting my money back, then lose it all again.”
At the end of the night, he had spent 1,200 of his hard-earned dollars in an attempt to win back the 200 he’d initially lost. It was the first time gambling adversely affected his daily life.
“That put me in the hole,” he says. “Then I had to work here fuckin’ sixty hours, seventy hours a week.” He leans back in his chair and motions his head towards the entrance of Subway Restaurant on the University at Buffalo’s North Campus, where he works as assistant manager.
With the proliferation of the casino industry, the growing popularity and accessibility of Internet gambling, spikes in sports betting and the mainstreaming of Texas hold ‘em, students like Lee are becoming more and more common. For most, gambling serves as an innocent diversion. Experts agree, however, that gambling carries with it a number of underlying risks; especially for those with excessive or impulsive tendencies.
According to Heiko Ganzer, President of the New York Council on Problem Gambling, about 80 percent of young people engage in some type of gambling. For the majority of them, gambling serves as a harmless recreational pursuit.
Ganzer says that many gamblers “are just having fun, and know how to pick up their money and walk away from the table. They’ll lose fifty bucks or a hundred bucks and once they lost that, look at it as a form of entertainment—which is the way it should be looked at.”
While conceding that gambling is generally an innocuous pursuit, Mr. Ganzer emphasizes that like many other recreational indulgences—including casual drug use and alcohol consumption—gambling carries the risk of becoming a compulsive behavior.
Like drugs and alcohol, gambling is “an escape from reality and addiction usually develops within a very short period of time,” he says. “There’s three stages that they go through.”
Ganzer describes the first stage as “the big win,” where an individual wins a large sum of money and feels as though it is easy to make money gambling. At this stage, gamblers develop a false sense of confidence about their odds of winning.
He describes the second stage as “the chase.” At this stage, the individual is chasing the money, usually because the initial winnings have already been bet and lost in an attempt to win more.
The final stage is that of “desperation.” The gambler may ultimately end up at the ATM machine, borrowing from family and friends, or committing criminal acts in order to keep going.
“Technically, it’s an impulse control disorder,” says Ganzer. “It usually takes six months to two years” to develop a full blown gambling addiction. Even for the recreational gambler, these impulses can take over with little forewarning.
According to Larry Ashley, Director of the Problem Gambling Program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, adolescents and young adults are even more susceptible to such impulse disorders.
“Developmentally, they’re more at risk. We know that from looking at credit cards,” he says. “They think as a rule that they don’t have a problem with anything.”
According to Matt H., a recovering gambling addict who is in Gamblers Anonymous, more and more teenagers and college students are showing up at the meetings he regularly attends.
Riding High
Lee, 23, a recent UB graduate with degrees in psychology and communications, makes little effort to check these impulses.
“Basically if anyone wants to gamble, I’m willing to gamble,” he says as he sits back in his chair, his black Yankees cap cocked to the side.
“I’m saying if you wanna put a bet on something and I like my chances, I’m gonna gamble—whether it be cee-lo, cards, betting on a game, casino.”
Lee’s confidence is likely due to the fact that despite his low points, he has actually won more than he has lost.
“Overall I’m up on the casino,” he says with a smirk.
The official tally of his overall winnings, which he diligently keeps in his cell phone, is $5,135. He is, however, aware that his current financial standing is not a given. “It just so happens that it usually works out in my favor.”
He delights in the sensation of being up, comparing it to the high experienced by a drug user. “It’s a euphoric feeling,” he says. “It’s the euphoric feeling that brings people back.”
Lee also has a rationalization for losing. Although he is currently up on the casino, he still has bad days.
“Losing is like a necessary evil, you know?” he says. “It’s the possibility of losing that gives you a rush when you’re up.”
Breaking Even
Kassandra Best, a 21-year-old UB senior majoring in chemistry, gambles once every couple of months. “I’m not like, extreme.”
She is a self-described recreational gambler who is more interested in the entertainment value than the money-making potential. She typically sets stringent limits on her casino expenditures, but has lost control of her impulses on two separate occasions.
A little over a year ago, Best took a weekend trip to Niagara Falls, Canada with her boyfriend. After a few hours of boozing at the hotel, the couple headed to Casino Niagara.
“I found this video roulette game there, and I just blew all my money on it pretty much,” she says. She was winning initially, but little by little, she lost her winnings to the house.
“I was like, ‘After this one I’ll stop, after this one I’ll stop,’ and it just kept going and going. So I kept thinking ‘Oh if I keep going, eventually my luck has to change.’”
Ganzer describes the process by which gamblers like Best continue to play even as they lose excessive amounts of money.
“They find themselves all of the sudden in the hole, and then they can’t stop. They think ‘Okay, well, I’ll just do it one more time and I’ll win it all back and I’ll never do it again.’ They lie to themselves.”
After going to the ATM machine twice and losing a total of $200, she decided she’d reached her limit. “I’m a student, so to me that was a lot of money.”
Although the loss was a sobering experience for her, Best was back at it a month later. On a spring break cruise with two of her friends, she admits that she “stopped laying out in the sun to go gamble” at the on-board casino.
Although she only ended up losing a total of $60, she spent a significant portion of the trip gambling alone; even when her friends invited her out for the evening.
Best hasn’t been to the casino in some time due to financial constraints.
Peter Altholz, a 23-year-old psychology major who took a leave of absence during his second year at UB, never gambled until his freshman year of college. After learning to play in face-to-face games of Texas hold ‘em in the dorms, Altholz refined his skills and graduated to online poker.
He recalls receiving between $6,000 and $8,000 over a short period of time, most of which he lost playing online poker.
On one memorable night, Altholz bought into a game with $200. Within hours, he’d turned his initial buy-in into $3,500—but just couldn’t walk away.
“By the end of the night, I had zero in my account,” he says. He wound up in his bed, shaking violently in disbelief.
That night served as a reality check for Altholz, who now runs two event promotions companies out of his home in Buffalo’s University Heights district.
“I just stopped playing online poker, because it becomes an addiction…you’re chasing after the money,” he says. “If you’re not getting the right hands you start playing stupid cards.”
Recently, Altholz took a trip to Las Vegas with a group of friends and rekindled the old gambling flame. Feeling as though he’d learned from his freshman foibles, he set out to play a more refined game of poker.
He was up $300 until his last day, when he lost his winnings—plus an additional $200—playing roulette. He was flat broke.
Desperate to win back some of his money, he took out a $100 cash advance on his credit card and sat down in a poker room. Hours before his departure, he was up $700 and walked away from the table.
“If I’d lost it, then I’d be fucked—I don’t know.”
Since his trip, Altholz hasn’t played, and feels that he has learned a valuable lesson.
“At this point I realize that you’re gonna have swings,” he says. “And when you’re at the top of that roller coaster you have to get out.”
“The whole idea is balance,” says Ganzer. “When you go to extremes, you can get lost.”
Enabling
According to Ganzer, casinos play a huge role in facilitating and enabling the development of gambling addictions.
“They do everything to try to keep the gambler there. That’s how they make their money.”
Lee recalls that when he started visiting the casino less frequently, he began receiving mailings meant to lure him back.
“They sent me all types of offers trying to get me to go back with like a free hotel room, free tickets…”
He also describes the atmosphere inside the casino as one that completely isolates the gambler from the outside world.
“When you go in, there aren’t any windows so you can’t tell what time of day it is, no clocks—none of that,” he says, shaking his head. “Upbeat music that just keeps you in a good mood to keep spending money…free drinks, cause you’re more willing to do risky shit when you’re drunk.”
Phil Pantano, spokesman for the Seneca Gaming Corporation, refers to the Seneca-Niagara casino as “a high energy, exciting entertainment environment.”
The “full service resort,” as he calls it, has amenities ranging from restaurants to live entertainment to a full service hotel to a salon and spa—even shopping destinations.
“And based on an individual’s gaming activity, they will be sent different types of offers in the mail,” including but not limited to gift certificates and free hotel rooms.
He also cites a “complimentary beverage service while you are actively gaming.”
Addressing the Risk
Larry Ashley believes that the potential for problem gambling among adolescents has not been adequately addressed. In many cases, he believes states that are trying to foster gambling industries as a perceived mode of economic development are hesitant to tout the potential detriment of gambling activities.
“It’s critical with adolescents that we start prevention and awareness programming,” he says.
He emphasizes the need not only for states to get involved, but also for educational institutions to make an effort.
“Universities need to step up when putting policies together.”
Heiko Ganzer agrees that education is the key, and that first and foremost moderation is the most important lesson.
“The kids today, they’re very frustrated because they’re not supposed to drink too much, they’re not supposed to smoke weed too much…and now they figured ‘Okay, gambling’s pretty cool, we’ll do that.’ And you know the problem is, it’s like anything else. If you do too much of it, you’re going to get into trouble.”
