For some college students, taking chances with their money can be a gamble.

Shon Kaftli, a junior at Iowa State, gambles, but he said he doesn’t have a gambling problem. Kaftli said he loves to gamble, especially at Mesquaki Bingo and Casino.

Gambling could easily become a problem for college students, he said, but luckily, he added, he realizes he can stop when he wants to.

But Kaftli believes college students cannot be recognized with a gambling problem because many of them do the sports gambling “behind the doors.”

Gambling “can start out recreational. I go, and I like to go, but I don’t feel like I have a problem. There’s a limit. When I lost $250 (the most he ever lost) I [realized I need to] put a limit on what I can lose.”

Marty Helle, a senior in journalism, said he gambles at Mesquaki also: “I guess because it’s exciting. There are a lot of interesting people there, and there’s always the chance you will win money.

“I usually play craps, poker and occasionally blackjack,” he said.

The most he’s ever bet: “I’ve probably had $30 on one square before in poker.”

The most he ever won was $150, and the most he ever lost was $70 in one night.

“You never know when your streak’s going to end. If you get $150 up, it’s probably going to end soon.”

Helle said there’ve been weeks when he’s gone three to four times in a week to Mesquaki and has been down $150 for the week.

Helle said he doesn’t have a problem, but “I do get the urge to go and gamble. Like right now I want to go gambling within the next five or six days.”

In Iowa, Helle believes there’s a problem because casinos are ripping off people and their main concern isn’t really the people, but rather making revenue.

“They know as soon as they get in they can rip them for whatever it’s worth,” he said.

“It’s bad to be here in Iowa gambling at a slot because you get ripped off more,” he said. “College students have such easy access to cash. At Mesquaki there are three cash machines. They only dispense $50 bills, nothing less.”

Helle said he thinks sports betting is a common thing at ISU.

“I’ve heard that college students are likely to leave college because of it,” he said.

Many officials say in the past year there has been a large increase in gambling in the state, but students with a gambling problem are not easily identified because it’s easier to conceal than other compulsive problems.

And while no students have gone through the doors of the ISU Financial Counseling Clinic yet, Anne Swift, supervisor of the clinic, is certain those students with problems will seek help from them eventually.

“[As of now] we haven’t had any students come in who compulsive gamble, but I think it’s a matter of time that we’ll see that,” she said.

Swift and some of the counselors of the clinic were just recently at a workshop at the Consumer Credit Counseling Service in Des Moines where they had seen that the number of calls going into hotline numbers for gambling problems have risen.

Although 95 percent of people who gamble do it for recreational purposes, Swift said there is still that 3 to 5 percent have a gambling problem.

Swift said that in 1988 there were 203 calls placed from gamblers to 1-800-BETS-OFF. In 1995 there were 841 calls placed. Most of the calls were from men, and of the number of calls in 1995, 23 percent were placed by those 18 and under, and 19 percent were placed by callers who were 19-25.

One problem with the rise in gambling for college students, Swift said, is the accessibility of places people can go to gamble.

It’s almost as if ISU is in the middle of a “gambling triangle,” Swift said. Mesquaki is to the east, Prairie Meadows is to the south and Bluffs Run is to the west. There’s also the riverboat gambling.

Gambling is also taking place right in the home of the students including sports gambling and lottery tickets.

Swift said she knows these type of ISU student gamblers are out there because she has been told by ISU advisers that there are students who are doing a lot of sports gambling and betting on campus.

Another factor related to problem gambling, especially with college students, is the accessibility of credit cards which have risen in popularity in the past five to six years, and ATM cards which also allow not only easy access to cash, but also availability of money taken from credit card lines.

Tom Coates, the executive director of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service, has also been very concerned with the rise in gambling in Iowa, even more so with college students.

Calls to 1-800-BETS-OFF have risen “significantly since a few months back,” Coates said. “There’s an increase in publicity and the PR campaigns have increased,” he said.

With ATM cards, he said, the money just doesn’t come from the pockets, but also the credit card lines.

“Eight out of the 10 most active ATM machines in Iowa are located in casinos,” he said. “College students are more likely accessible to open lines of credit.”

Coates said the rate of bankruptcy due to gambling has increased by 20 percent in 1995 versus 1994 for the state of Iowa, compared to a 5.5 percent increase in the rest of the country. “

Coates said the gambling debt is “one of the biggest problems we’re facing” in Iowa. “The young are much more likely to become compulsive gamblers.”

Coates said he has a problem with the Mesquaki Casino, where most college students are likely to go. He believes they are not checking IDs like they should be at Mesquaki.

Kaftli said that at Mesquaki he has never been carded for his identification card verifying that he is 21-years-old.

“I’ve just gone in and sat at the [blackjack] table,” he said. “They do check for IDs when they serve drinks” but not for gambling.

Two years ago, he said, “I started going to Mesquaki. At the time, gambling was 18 in Iowa.” However, he said he gambled illegally for about a year and a half.

Helle thinks they don’t ID at Mesquaki because, “the secret of Mesquaki is they ID women,” rather than men. “As a man, I walked in there, and I’m not a very old-looking guy. I went in about 20 times under age and I never got IDed,” he said.

When Helle took his girlfriend along, who is underage, they got IDed.

“I’ve taken her five times, and we’ve gotten IDed about three of those times,” he said.

“If you go to Mesquaki and sit down with others, they are probably people who shouldn’t be there,” Helle said. They are losing big money because, “they are either too young or they don’t know the rules of the game, don’t know what they are doing.”

Coates said the problem with Mesquaki Casino is they refuse to allow outside professional management. He said there are more responsible ways to approach factors dealing with college students who gamble.

“They refuse to allow the state enforcement of property,” he said. “It’s like they’re saying ‘No, we’re not running a clean operation.’ “

He said they are not taking action with concern towards the young population.

Mesquaki officials did not return the Daily’s phone calls about this issue.

A counselor at 1-800-BETS-OFF, who helps people seek help for gambling, said as of now, ISU students don’t seem to have a problem with gambling, but like Swift said, it isn’t really visible yet.

“Some ISU students, not too many, do have a problem,” said Scott, who only goes by his first name as a counselor for the hotline.

Scott has received calls from ISU students seeking counseling, more so than in the past.

There are so many different types of gambling, he said, including: poker with friends, casino gambling and sports gambling, where people bet on such sports as basketball, football, baseball, etc.

Many of the calls they get from students, he said, are those who owe money or some who are thinking of dropping out of school because of financial problems with gambling.

“Some have problems with tuition — they can’t afford it,” he said.

Scott is a recovering compulsive gambler himself and hasn’t gambled for a year and eight months.

He started gambling in high school, and he continued to gamble in college, especially with Las Vegas so close to his college located in Arizona.

The most he ever bet at once was $10,000, and “school didn’t seem important,” he said.

“The thing about compulsive gambling is the money — it’s the way of living,” he said. “The compulsive gambler is either gambling or thinking about it. It controls one’s life. I think it’s a pathetic lonely life.”

Scott encourages college students who think they have a problem to get help either by calling the hotline or seeking other help from other services.

“I think it’s pretty common when people see 1-800-BETS-OFF on TV and people joke about it,” he said. “They don’t take it very seriously, [but the truth is] they’re in real deep.”

Helle said he knows “people who wake up in the middle of the night and hear the dinging in their ears—’ding, ding, ding.'”

Now that could be a problem, he added.