The Kids Are All Rich by Steve Farhood

There's nothing uglier than a bitter baby-boomer.

I should know.

When I was 16, I was dealing blackjack for a nickel a hand in my high school homeroom. In college, I graduated to booking even-money bets for $5 or $10 challenging my friends to pick any three players in a Major League game who would combine for five hits. It paid for my pizza.

Thanks to the poker boom, today's kids snicker at such small-time action. Pocket change? They're playing for (swallow hard) millions.

That's right, millions.

It's humiliating to reveal, but when I was 20, I dressed in two-tone shoes and tight shirts and tried to pick up babes at discos. I wanted to be Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, but I danced like Elaine on Seinfeld. Today's 20-year-olds dress in t-shirts and backward baseball caps and try to pick up full houses on the Internet. They want to be Phil Ivey on the World Poker Tour.

In January 2006, I covered the PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure, a sun-stop on the WPT. There were about 700 entrants, and it seemed none were of legal drinking age. Throughout the various lobbies of the massive Atlantis on Paradise Island, there they were, slouched on couches, pale as paste, and playing poker on their wireless laptops. At one point, I cased a scene by screaming at a cluster of four or five players: "You're in the Bahamas! It's 78 degrees outside! Put those damn computers away and get some sun! Jump in the pool! Drink a Bloody Mary! Gawk at a bikini and think crazy thoughts! Live a little!

Well, I didn't really shout out loud, but that's what I was thinking.

With the TV cameras recording every real and imaginary tell, a pair of 18-year-olds made the final table of six. Hell, in U.S. casinos, these kids would be carded and sent back to the mall. The tournament winner, Steve Paul-Ambrose, was a 22-year-old college student from the University of Waterloo in Ontario. His mother watched him pocket $1,388,600. I don't know if she cried, but I certainly did.

According to PokerStars, "Steve plans to continue his studies, but will use his free time to concentrate on big-buy-in poker tournaments. Look for Steve online at PokerStars and at poker tournaments all over North America."

On the way to the airport, I shared a cab with another baby-face. His name is Josh Schlein.

"Play in the tournament?" I asked.

"Yeah, got knocked out the first day," Josh answered.

I felt for him. Here he was, a 20-year-old kid on his own. Got wiped out by the sharks.

Probably can't spare an extra dollar for a candy bar.

"But I didn't do badly in Aruba," Josh continued.

"Oh, really? What happened there?"

"I came in second to Freddy Deeb. Second place was $440,000."

I regained my composure just in time to make sure Josh paid for the cab.

And as if I need another reason to feel like a nickel-and-dimer, I just read about University of Minnesota student Mike Schneider. Forgive me for my antiquated thinking, but isn't spring break supposed to be about hanging out in South Beach and searching for loose co-eds? Well, Schneider spent his vacation playing eight hours of poker a day on a Caribbean cruise, which means the closest he got to a girl gone wild was a 61-year-old grandmother of three who got cracked with pocket aces and went on tilt.

Schneider won $1-million, the first-place prize money in the PartyPoker Million V Limit Hold'Em tournament.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.