I can't stop playing poker. It isn't like I haven't tried. It isn't like I haven't been hiding my money and avoiding the regular poker guys. I've done that. In fact, it's been more than a week since I've even played a real game of poker.

Unfortunately, thanks to our wonderful Information Science Technology staff here at Penn State, I have access to the Internet pretty much anywhere I go.

It's not real, physical poker that is doing me in. Face-to-face Texas Hold 'Em is usually only a one night a week thing. No big deal. Just a couple of the guys, getting together to sling cards around a table.

Internet Texas Hold 'Em, however, is an entirely different beast. It just sits there in the background of my computer, patiently waiting for me to have a lull in my homework or a moment of boredom. It doesn't ask for my attention, and it doesn't require any real maintenance. It's there whenever I want it... whenever I need it.

Basically, it is everything that my girlfriend isn't. I've caught myself saying "Sorry honey, I'm playing poker" on more than one occasion.

Not that I am addicted or anything, nah, that isn't it. I'm not addicted. I'm not the guy they are talking about in those Harrah's advertisements they show during the World Series of Poker. I've checked all the questions they ask you ("Do you have trouble setting a limit? Do you gamble when you're lonely or depressed?") and I've decided that I am perfectly able to quit poker any time I want.

Give me a second - I am playing on two tables right now and I just flopped a nut straight on one of them.

The thing is, it's not even gambling. It's fake money. I have yet to allow myself to pull out my credit card and dip into my bank account. I don't have a problem setting my limit, because my limit is $0.

And I play all the time. Constantly. Happy or sad, doesn't matter. I play when I am the only one around and I play when I have a couple friends over.

The devil in the whole thing is that it is just so easy. It's easy to start, easy to play, easy to keep playing.

The guys who made this thing are smart. Marketing majors or something.

Poker, by itself, is mostly harmless. Five dollars here, $10 there, you win some, you lose some.

That is the reason you can find, on any given night, in any housing building on campus, five or six guys huddled around a table flinging poker chips around.

Poker has made its way into the mainstream by being a cool game that non-athletic geeks can play. A "sport" we slackers, nerds and dorks can finally latch on to. It gives us a reason to watch ESPN. It lets us compare ourselves to all the cool characters in movies like Rounders.

And in the most perfect of scenarios, it lets us take the dumb jock's money.

However, the Internet poker phenomenon is a monstrous adaptation of the original. Now we geeks can stay in our natural habitat. We can squander our time in private.

We can play poker while watching Cartoon Network and we can play poker in our underwear.

Basically, Internet poker has single-handedly removed all of the redeeming factors of poker for geeks, and replaced them with an addictive convenience factor.

It's not fair, I tell you.

It's gotten to the point where I don't play in between doing homework-- I do homework in between hands of poker.

Its vernacular has taken over my every day life. When a buddy of mine was describing his relationship problems the other day, I told him, and I quote: "Dude, muck her, she's only 17 percent to win."

OK... I may have made that up, but still, it illustrates my point.

It isn't that Internet poker has become detrimental to my every day life. It's just that... I don't know, I'm afraid that one day, out of sheer boredom and an inflated ego (say, from winning $50,000 of fake money), I may pull out the credit card and dip into the real thing.

I keep telling myself that that day will never come, but... I don't know. Sometimes, like when I wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about losing pocket Aces to an inside straight on the river, I wonder... "How long will it be till I really go all-in?"

Oh well, I suppose it isn't worth worrying about right now - not while I've got King-Queen suited at one table and pocket Jacks at the other.