Going all in
Going all in: The wins and losses of college gambling
Evan Stefanik
Macey Chamberlin
In college towns, students and residents are always looking for fun.
Some find it in the camaraderie of friends and strangers through gambling, risking their livelihoods for a thrill. In Oxford, the Newgate Poker Club feeds that interest.
Newgate Poker Club invites players of all experience levels to gamble until 3 a.m. every day of the week. The club has rebranded the usual casino experience by excluding its staff from gambling, allowing players to determine their own rules. Confident regulars, some of whom travel from out of town in expensive cars, load the lush green roundtable room of Newgate for their favorite nights.
But if players bet too highly on their chances and skill, they can lose more than just their money.
Gambling can include activities like poker, video gaming and sports betting. Sports betting continues to grow more popular each year, increasing its wealth by 75% annually, according to a report by Visual Capitalist. Since Ohio legalized sports betting in January 2023, college students in Oxford have begun taking their shot at winning.
Senior finance and marketing double major Matthew Duffy is active on the sports betting platforms DraftKings and FanDuel each week of the NFL season. So far, his profit has reached over $1,000 after consistent wins. He started betting in high school and takes pride in his earnings today from his vast knowledge of sports. But he rarely strays from sports betting.
“It’s all chance and I’m not into that,” Duffy said. “You can’t win everything and it can become a huge problem for some people. It might be more than just fun for them.”
Keegan Alvis, a junior electrical engineering major, won $500 on sports bets before quickly losing that money - and more. To make his pay-off from sports betting, Alvis gathers his buddies a few times a week to watch games and strategize parlays, which combine multiple selections into a single bet.
“It’s really just throwing down the money on parlays. You’re taking a chance on either team to win,” Alvis said. “If one of those things doesn't hit, the whole parlay loses, so then you lose your money.”
Alvis felt the gambling urge his first year at Miami. Before turning 21 – the eligible age to use legal gambling apps – he made five parlays a day in his older friends’ books. Now, he adds $20 buy-ins at weekly poker rounds with his roommates.
“I wouldn’t go out of my way to bring my gambling up to people that don’t bet,” Alvis said. “My friends and I are usually active, but I try to stay away from doing it every day of the week.”
Alvis paused his sports betting at the end of his sophomore year to wait for the big books. With some moderation, Alvis figured out how to stake other players and pay them back efficiently.
For younger college students, their exposure to gambling while underage often leads them right to the thrill when they turn 21. Gambling addiction expert Jody Bechtold said this is a dangerous position for students to be in.
“The brain isn’t fully developed until 25 years old, so they’re more vulnerable,” Bechtold said. “Impulsivity and decision-making is the last thing to develop in the prefrontal cortex, so they don’t know how to stop it or regulate it. It asks you to behave in a way that your brain isn’t fully capable of yet.”
Bechtold works with gambling addiction patients every day. As a clinician at Miami’s Institute for Responsible Gaming, Lotteries and Sport, she plans on building educational programs about gambling through the school of social work.
In her practice, Bechtold hears stories from parents of 18-year-old students who have succumbed to gambling’s excessive advertising and peer pressure.
“It’s so normalized before somebody even gets into college,” Bechtold said. “There’s a whole generation coming in that’s not around their parents, who can’t do much, and at the university, not many are advocates on campus because no one’s talking about it. It's a real setup.”
According to TIME Magazine, one in every 10 college students gamble in a disordered way, with 4% partaking in daily sports betting. In her studies on prevention, Bechtold lists warning signs like when gamblers spend more money than they intend to and isolate themselves for more playing time.
While some manage to gamble safely and just for fun, Bechtold says that many others do it to cope with trauma, mental health issues, grief and a lack of fitting in. Regardless of why people choose to gamble, they usually keep their talk about it to a minimum.
For those who develop a poor relationship with gambling, Bechtold advises two methods: total abstinence or harm-reduction. For the second option, gambling addicts learn how to create a plan of when and for how long they can afford to gamble, with how much money and what other healthy mechanisms might help them.
“The goal is abstinence, but not right away,” Bechtold said. “It can be controversial compared to treatment for substance abuse disorders, but we don’t want to just stop. Doing that might increase harm, which is common, especially for younger people.”
Abstinence also requires patients to fill their schedules with other commitments, address their underlying motives for gambling and remove their access to gambling opportunities.
Ohio offers a self-exclusion program to gamblers that forbids them from casinos, bans them from operating online accounts and restricts their available funds. Bechtold recommends smartphone-blocking software installations, like Gamban, and choosing gift cards for playing online rather than spending pocket money.
“There’s very effective methods that put distance between impulsive thoughts and acting on them,” Bechtold said. “But there’s much more that can be done.”
