Internet gaming in the truest sense of the phrase—high stakes online poker—is now a fast-growing industry estimated at $12 billion a year. However, only 5 percent of those playing have sustained success. The other 95 percent lose.
In the past five years, poker has gone from a private leisure activity to one of the highest-rated televised "sports," second only to football. Based on the legends of highly successful online players who have won great wealth in face-to-face tournaments, the number of college students actively gambling online has surged.
A University of Connecticut survey "found that one out of every four college students who gambles online fits the clinical definition of a pathological gambler, suggesting that hundreds of thousands of students may be addicted" (Michael Werner, "All In? The Stakes Are Rising as Internet Poker Gains Popularity Among College Students," Oregon Quarterly, Autumn 2007).
Instead of trying to take the wealth of others through winning bets against them, the Bible encourages us to obtain income through work (see 1 Thessalonians 4:11; Proverbs 13:11). For more on what the Bible says about gambling, see our "Teen Bible Study Discussion Guide: Gambling" .
