College Kids Finance Their Four Years of School -- with Online Poker Winnings

 As the cost of a college education continues to rise, some enterprising students are finding creative ways to finance their tuition.

One site, Absolutepoker.com, is running local and national poker tournaments -- with the winner getting a free semester of tuition.  It doesn't take a major in mathematics or statistics to figure out that that's quite a deal. Though it will probably help.

"We're responding to the demand," said Absolutepoker spokesman, Jason Reindorp. "These are pretty savvy students who are very responsible and know what they're getting into."

Survey of Students

Ohio State University recently conducted a survey of student gambling -- in collaboration with two other schools. About 3,500 students responded -- and 14 percent of them say they have gambled online.

At Kent State University, in Ohio, student Brian Moreno said that when he's not studying, or in class, he's at his PC, playing online poker to make money to pay his tuition. He's earned about $5,000 since he started playing last year, and it is defraying his costs. "There have been times I've lost $150 in one hand," Moreno said.

Some analysts said televised poker tournaments have helped to spur interest in the online games, and sending the number of gambing Web sites soaring from fewer than 25 sites 11 years ago, to more than 2,000 today.

At Absolutepoker.com, a full page of the Web site is devoted to responsible gambling. Under the heading, "How are you paying for college?," the site features interviews with students, like Purdue University's David Wood,  and other students who are financing their education online. Knicknamed "Woody," the Fort Wayne native is described as "a brother in the Delta Chi Fraternity at Purdue University.  During a normal school week he enjoys playing ping pong, golf, definitely basketball, and most of all hanging out with his Delta Chi brothers.  He has been playing poker since he was 16 years old and is a threat at the casino." The site adds,  "congratulations, David, for being one of the Win Your Tuition Finalists at Absolute Poker."

Sadly, according to Ron Root, of the Ohio Council for Compulsive Gambling, at least half of the calls he received in the last six months were due to Internet gambling. "They've run up $10,000 or more on credit cards and they don't know what to do," he said.

Wisdom, Not Years

But young Moreno, showing a wisdom beyond his years, said he has his own, sound strategy for gambling responsibly: pay the bills first and don't bet money you don't have online.

"If I lose my money, I had fun doing it," he said. "If I make money, great. That's what I'm there for."

Some of these kids -- real technophiles -- outfit their PCs to make their gaming experiences even more thrilling. For example, Bigfoot Networks Inc. recently introduced a gaming product - the Killer NIC (Network Interface Card). Powered by LLR Technology.

The NIC features a 400Mhz Network Processing Unit (NPU) and 64MB of dedicated DDR. These result in better ping times and more Frames Per Second (FPS) whilst playing games online.

This offloads the network processing tasks of games away from the CPU and onto the NPU, thus speeding up the online gaming experience.  The interface card is designed specifically for online video games, like video poker. What is more, the LLR Technology offers developers the chance to write their own applications and utilities to run on the NPU. The NIC goes on sale starting August 16th -- right in time for the fall semester of college.

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