Have you been bitten by the poker bug? If so, you’re not alone. This year, thanks to televised poker games and online gambling sites, poker has replaced sports betting as the most popular way to take a risk.
Gone are the Togel Hongkong iconic old greasy poker players – green visors, cigars and all. Now, poker is glamorous. Heck – it’s televised, and even celebrities like Ben Affleck, Tony Hawk and Angela Bassett aren’t ashamed to say they play it. Poker is hot, and teenagers are flocking to it with open arms.
ESPN started televising the World Series of Poker a little over a year ago, and since then, poker popularity’s taken off like gangbusters. The Travel Channel, Bravo and Fox SportsNet have also taken to televising poker tournaments.
The young players on the televised tournaments are one reason the sport’s really taking off with teens and young people. Whether it’s “The Crew,” a group of 20-somethings headed up by phenom Dutch Boyd, who earned a law degree at age 18, or Phil Ivey, a 27-year-old who’s been playing poker professionally for 10 years, there are plenty of young success stories to latch on to.
Emily Biondo, a senior in high school from Togel Hongkong Maryland, says that while she started playing poker with her family when she was in sixth grade, she didn’t come out of the “poker closet” until last year, when poker became mainstream in her school. She estimates that about 90 percent of her school knows how to play poker, just from watching the shows. And, she said, about 60 percent play regularly,
Studies in the United States and Canada have indicated that about 80 percent of teenagers have reported gambling in the past year. While sports gambling used to be the most popular way to take a risk, in the past year, all that attention has switched to poker.
While many teens might not bet any Togel Hongkong money and play just to have something to do in the suburbs with their friends on a Friday night, others lay down around $20 a game. One teen told WireTap that their friend cashed their entire paycheck each week, around $200, and used it to play poker until the next check came in. The phenomenon has even sparked an urban legend in the Philadelphia area about a freshman who was so indebted to upperclassmen because of poker that he sold his laptop.
