Would you rather pay up to twenty dollars to see a film when you could take home 250 dollars in one night? Poker and playing cards is the largest new fad for teenage boys. Kids from ages twelve to eighteen are now spending their Friday nights in basements playing Texas Hold’em tournaments instead of participating in the usual high school clichés like football games and house parties.

Ever since ESPN aired the World Series of Poker in 2003, students have shown a growing interest in the “sport.” When the unheard of amateur Chris Moneymaker turned a forty dollar bid into a two million dollar payday, kids of all ages around the country took notice.

The new fad sweeping the nation has both kids and adults taking interest. Online gambling, which is easy to gain underage access to because of internet anonymity, has grown at an unprecedented rate. Kids as young as eleven are betting their weekly allowance in an attempt at poker glory.

Ricky Marchant, a senior at Walter Johnson, first played with friends. “I started playing with small five dollar buy-ins with little plastic chips. 20 [dollars] was way too much to me. It was fun chilling with friends playing cards for money.” But now, things have changed. Marchant regularly plays in twenty dollar “cash games” where the amount paid is based on the amount of chips people have at the end of the day. Payouts can total in the hundreds of dollars. The stakes have grown since he started in the random basement game.

Many view this new trend as harmful. Parents see gambling as detrimental to their kids, thinking it might lead to future gambling problems. Yet adults fail to realize the beneficial effects. In a Boston Globe article earlier this year, Ken Winter, director of the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at the University of Minnesota, said that, “some useful skills can be honed during poker games, including socializing, mathematical prowess, decision-making, and learning to control emotions.” When faced with the alternative, such as drinking or doing drugs, choosing poker seems a bright light in a teenage world faced with dark temptations.

Money is tempting, and poker can lead to big pay days. Marchant has won up to 250 dollars in one day. Some tournaments, with $50 buy-ins, can garner a winner over five hundred dollars. But with every winner there is a loser. Some kids put over one hundred dollars into the pot and come out with nothing.

A lot has changed since kids mowed lawns and babysat to make money. Poker is turning into not just a hobby, but a weekly job. “I do something I enjoy, and with some practice, I have started to make a decent income,” says Marchant.

This holiday season, those cash presents under the tree may be turned into chips for the weekly poker game. As for gifts? “Next on my Christmas list is a poker table,” said Marchant.