By John Walters, SI.com

Games like this one among Indiana's self-proclaimed Poker Crew are popping up all over campus, sometimes twice a day, sometimes all night, sometimes for days at a time. David E. Klutho

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"Me and my buddy Pete, we played two days nonstop over winter break. First we hit the Hard Rock Casino [in Hollywood, Fla.] around 9 p.m. We entered a multitable no-limit [Texas hold 'em] tournament with a $65 buy-in that went from 11 at night until 7 a.m. with about 200 players. I won. Then we went to a cash game at a guy's house. Then back to the Hard Rock. Then back to the cash game. We maybe got one hour of sleep the whole time. But I won about eight grand. Two days of mayhem."
-- Gabe, junior, Central Florida

The next hand, when you are playing no-limit Texas hold 'em, never comes soon enough. It doesn't matter if you just mucked 2-7 offsuited before the flop or if you went all in with a set of cowboys on the river. Doesn't matter if you just suffered a bad beat ("I had a boat, queens high, and he comes over the top with quad 6s") or if you had the nuts. Doesn't matter if you are staring at your first hole cards of the day on Partypoker.com or if, like Gabe -- who, like most of the students interviewed for this story, did not want his last name used -- you are in the final hour of a two-day Rounders-esque rampage. Nothing matters but the next hand.

"The last five days I've been playing online all day long," says Keith, a Central Florida junior. "Seriously, I haven't left my apartment. If I'm losing, I've got to keep playing to recoup. If I'm winning, I've got to keep playing because I'm hot."

And that is why the undergrads in the weekly $100-buy-in game at Duke's Wayne Manor play with two decks: so one can be shuffled while the current hand is being played. That is why Grayson, a sophomore at Florida, plays four hands simultaneously on Partypoker.com. That is why James, a student at Creighton, plays on his laptop in class.

"You don't understand," says Tom, an Indiana junior who asked that his real name not be used. "Right before you flop a hand, before you win, when you know you've got the nuts [an unbeatable hand], that's the greatest rush in the world."

"i'll play 1,500 hands online in six hours. no big deal. i chat online or watch tv at the same time. how much homework do i do while i'm playing hold 'em? too much. last week i basically wrote a 10-page paper for my politics in film and fiction course while playing two hands at a time."
-- GRAYSON, SOPHOMORE, FLORIDA

There are 2,598,960 specific hands in poker, and it's a good bet there are as many tales on college campuses relating to the phenomenon of no-limit Texas hold 'em (the game you've seen played on the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour and ESPN's World Series of Poker as well as in the 1998 film Rounders). In the past two years hold 'em has become the most popular pastime in the halls of higher education since procrastination.

Jason, a Duke sophomore, spent part of his spring break last month in Vienna participating in a European Poker Tour event that had a 2,000 euro ($2,800) buy-in; he placed 100th out of 300 players. Last summer Jason won $60,000 playing both online and in poker rooms in his native New York City. And yet he once wrote an e-mail to his Wayne Manor buddies informing them, almost giddily, that "I just lost $6,500 in 92 minutes."