Online poker tournament offers college scholarship

By DRU SEFTON
Newhouse News Service

Soon thousands of poker players around the world will be competing in a massive virtual Texas Hold 'Em tournament with a controversial jackpot: a college scholarship.

Absolutepoker.com will pay a semester's tuition for the winner.

"If they're going to Harvard, or wherever, we'll be happy to pay," said Patrick McKenna, vice president of business development for the Costa Rica-based site.

This is the first such tourney. Site administrators hope to hold competitions for a new scholarship each semester.

It's one of what might be dubbed "vice scholarships" — higher-education funds provided by gambling, tobacco or liquor interests, such as Philip Morris USA and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

But those two don't make young people smoke or drink to receive funds. Participants must gamble, albeit with play money, for the poker scholarship.

"This raises serious concerns," said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "If a student had to smoke a carton of cigarettes a day for a year for a scholarship, there'd be a huge outcry."

Whyte said research has shown young people have a higher rate of gambling problems than adults, so Absolute Poker "is targeting an at-risk population." Requiring students to gamble for the scholarship "may very well be saddling the recipient with a devastating mental health disorder."

But Amy Weinstein, executive director of the National Scholarship Providers Association, said she thinks the poker scholarship is actually "a classic example of a company being very innovative" in providing money.

Such private funding is "often overlooked as a piece of the puzzle of how we get students into higher education," Weinstein said.

Her group comprises more than 150 organizations and 220 individuals that award more than $450 million to some 200,000 students each year.

This month it released a national study, Private Scholarships Count: Access to Higher Education and the Critical Role of the Private Sector, in collaboration with the Institute for Higher Education Policy and Scholarship America. The research revealed that more than $3 billion, or 7 percent of all grants, came from corporations, foundations and other private groups and individuals in school year 2003-2004.

Absolute Poker's McKenna said he sees nothing wrong with poker bankrolling a semester's education. "Poker is now very mainstream, and it's definitely a skill game," he said.

Absolutepoker.com offers both free and pay gaming; the scholarship tournament is free. Students must be registered by today. Details can be found at www.absolutepoker.com/ college/how-to-enter.asp. The company is expecting some 5,000 to sign up.

For the tourney there'll be nine players to a virtual table, with the winner from each progressing to the next round. "In the end, we'll have the final nine people battling it out," McKenna said.

Garin Gustafson, head of marketing for Absolute Poker, said its founders "found their passion for poker in college, and this is a way to reconnect them to that time in their lives."

http://www.chron.com - 2005-05-23 04:18:58