TORONTO —

Newly minted 18-year-old millionaire Mike McDonald has a warning for casual poker players who are thinking about ditching school or work to get rich quick: don't.

It's a message gambling addiction experts are applauding with a heavy sigh of relief.

They expect McDonald's stunning US$1.4-million win at a poker tournament in Germany will legitimize the fantasies of teenagers and poker players who think they too can drop everything and make a successful, lucrative career out of playing cards.

But the Waterloo, Ont., card shark -- who is the youngest poker player to ever win a top-level European tournament -- said he has years of experience under his belt despite his young age, and is urging the dreamers to accept reality.

"Realistically, there are a lot more failure stories than there are success stories,'' McDonald said Tuesday in an interview from Waterloo, hours after he arrived home from his big win.

"For the vast majority of people, staying away from poker is probably best.''

McDonald first took up poker when he was 15 and said it took years and countless hours of practice and study to build his skills. He estimates he plays poker online about 25 hours a week, with another 50 to 60 hours dedicated to reading books, watching videos and talking strategy with other players.

Learning to play and becoming a poker professional is hardly a get-rich-quick scheme, said McDonald, who was enrolled at the University of Waterloo before putting his education on hold.

"If you approach it like a game of skill and you're constantly analyzing your decisions and stuff like that you most likely will end up being successful, but 99 per cent of people who play this game just play,'' McDonald said.

It's a godsend that McDonald is smart and level-headed and isn't telling the world to foolishly follow his lead, said Jon Kelly of Ontario's Responsible Gambling Council, who calls the teenager's win "the worst case scenario for problem gambling prevention.''

"Not because there's anything bad about what he did, but he's now a role model and he's going to be influential with many, many other kids who won't have his skill and talent and discipline,'' Kelly said.

"There's a great number of people who will have inflated expectations and whose gambling and poker will be much more risky to them than his was to him.''

Kelly said parents need to be concerned about gambling just as they worry about alcohol and drug use, citing recent research suggesting that one in three Ontario teens aged 15 to 17 are gambling for money.

As those teens get older and seek higher stakes, they can easily get in over their heads, particularly because the Internet has made gambling increasingly accessible and risky, he said.

"There a certain number of them who see gambling as a way to make money, so they're not just having a fun game with a bunch of guys, they're in it for the money and these are the people who we are most worried about.''

Parents need to be realistic and shouldn't expect their kids to listen if they tell them not to gamble, said Nigel Turner, a scientist who focuses on problem gambling for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Turner said his 11-year-old son was taking poker chips to school to play cards with other kids -- until the school made him to stop -- and he didn't think that was a problem, provided there was no real gambling for money going on.

"Personally I don't believe in prohibition, I think that telling kids they can't gamble, that it's bad, is self-defeating because since when do teenagers listen to parents anyway?'' Turner said.

Parents need to focus instead on getting through to their kids so they really understand the dangers of gambling, the small odds of winning, and that an addiction can easily get out of hand, he said.