Quiet College is Footloose and Flush with Poker
At first blush, Whitworth College doesn't seem a likely place to find a vigorous poker subculture. After all, students at this quiet Presbyterian college were not even allowed to dance on campus until the late 1960s. And alcohol on campus is still a major no-no.
And yet… Whitworth College, just outside Spokane, Washington, is home to a culture of poker playing that one senior called "huge… and growing every year."
"I started playing in my sophomore year," says Chris, whose enjoyment of poker has taken him beyond the "pinecone curtain" to fairly regular visits to a nearby casino. "Poker was already pretty big on campus (a few years ago), but it has really grown. You can find a good game any night of the week, in any dorm on campus."
Perhaps even more surprisingly, the flourishing body of card-holding, chip-pushing undergrads doesn't have to make their fold-or-call decisions while worrying about the game being busted by the authorities. That's because not only is poker on campus not forbidden, but some poker-related activities are actually sponsored by the institution itself!
"When I was an RA (residence assistant), one of the major programs I put on during spring semester was a Poker Night," says Marcus, a senior English major whose childhood in treeless wheat country leads him to a real appreciation of this beautiful little campus among the pine trees just north of Spokane. "It was something we talked about all they way up to the associate dean's office, and we agreed that it was important to present poker in an educational context, and with an emphasis on the importance of remaining responsible, and of always keeping things in perspective."
That "perspective," by the way, includes this observation by the college's president, Bill Robinson: "I like our philosophy of dealing with, rather than proscribing, activities that have been designated as vices on the basis of their abuse." In other words, it is absurd to define poker (or dancing or powerful automobiles) itself as problematic, just because a few people have allowed it to become a problem for them.
Turnout for the poker night was "a lot bigger than for any other dorm activity that year," Marcus says, more than one in ten of all campus residents showed up and were eager participants. One session taught newcomers the rules of poker and a little about strategy, while more experienced groups were presented with tips for more effective play. The instructional session then morphed into an actual tournament with so many enthusiastic participants that the game overflowed the room. It became necessary for additional tables to be set up in an adjacent lounge.
Because the tournament was an event officially sponsored by the college, the chips were distributed free, and no actual money changed hands. But the majority of games to be found "any night" in "any dorm" are affairs involving real bets for real value. In fact, notes Alex N., a senior who is majoring in English after transferring from large state university last year, it's harder to find a game that doesn't involve actual money than it is to find tables that have to be bought into with cold hard cash. "We usually play for no stakes after youth-group activities at church," he says, "but on campus, it's hard to find a game where you don't have to pay to play."
Given the fact that college students are typically among the least flush-with-cash populations in the country, it's not surprising that both buy-ins and pots at the various tables tend to be modest. Ales S., a junior history major who played a good deal of poker during his first two years on campus, says that the biggest on-campus pots he ever saw were in the $90-$100 range, but that winnings on that scale were "very rare." Most dorm games are in the $2-$5 range, with winner-take-all pots typically less than 20 bucks. It's not poker on the scale that Annie Duke and Johnny Chan are used to… but it's poker, and it's fun.
Poker-loving students are eager to play, but they value the camaraderie more than the cash. Yes, money is nice… but so are people. Maybe that attitude is the real ace in the Whitworth student poker players' hole.