He's mumbling to himself now, and this is a bad sign.
He can't stop blinking either. His eyes are dried from the artificial glow of the computer screen, the only source of light in the dark room.
The blinking is almost in rhythm with the tapping of his finger on the edge of the keyboard and the crinkling sound of an empty caffeine energy drink clutched securely in his other hand.
The can now crushed, he pushes it off the small desk into a pile of the other four he's had tonight.
"What kind of a play is that?" Nick asks, slapping the computer screen with the back of his hand. "This is getting ridiculous. This stupid jackass is killing me."
Nick, 23, a recent graduate of The University of Memphis, is part of a rapidly growing statistic among college-aged males.
He gambles on online poker.
He plays online blackjack, too.
He spends four hours a week in his small white car on trips back and forth to casinos in North Mississippi. Sometimes he heads instead for the dog tracks across the river in West Memphis.
He places bets on 10 to 15 sporting events every day and on weekends that number can swell to 25.
If it can be bet on, Nick wants action.
The National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth found that the percentage of college-aged males who gambled at least once a week jumped from 7.3 percent in 2003 to 12.5 in 2004, a 58 percent increase.
That number could, and very likely will, jump even higher this year.
"It's a rush," Nick said plainly. "There's this feeling you get when you win a big hand or when your team scores a touchdown to win a big bet for you.
"It's just exciting for me. It's the most exciting thing in my life."
He's been sitting in front of his computer for three hours now and as Friday night creeps into the wee hours of Saturday morning, Nick has lost more than $200 playing Texas Hold'em poker online.
Just as Nick begins to transfer another $200 from his checking account to his online poker account, his phone vibrates, nearly sliding off the desk into the pile of empty cans before Nick catches it.
"What's up man?"
"Oh, yeah, that's cool, but I don't think I'm going out tonight."
"Yeah, I do. Dude. I'll go out with ya'll tomorrow night - I just don't feel like getting ready and going out right now."
Nick hangs up.
"That was my brother," he explains, leaned back in his chair and rocking back and forth. "He's always trying to get me to go out with him. He doesn't like this."
Nick has rented a room in this small house with his brother and another friend for two years, but to look around his room you might assume he just moved in.
The walls are bare except for a framed poster of Albert Einstein. The only pieces of furniture in the room are a full size mattress and box springs lying on the worn carpet, a large oak dresser thats main use is storing DVDs, and small entertainment center which has been converted into a makeshift computer desk.
Nick stops rocking, clears his throat and reassumes his normal position - knees tucked tightly to his chest.
"That's all he does now," his brother James said later. "I think he spends like every dime he makes and every minute of his day betting on stuff."
The small alarm clock sitting next to his computer is now creeping closer to 3 a.m. Nick finally breaks his silence.
"I think I'm done," he said. "I need to quit before I get too tired."
He's had more success in this second session, winning $80 and leaving him down $120 for the night.
But he's not quite ready to head to bed, though.
With a full slate of college football games just a few hours away from kickoff, Nick surfs over to his online sports betting book to place his wagers.
"I don't do a lot of research - I just go with my gut most of the time," he said.
He scans the list of games for a few minutes then picks 16, betting $20 on each before finally climbing into bed.
Nick began gambling in high school with a small group of friends playing five-card draw poker for a few dollars.
That was the extent until Nick began college a couple years later.
"He only had a small part-time job, so we would give him some money every month," said Nick's mother, Barbara. "After a couple months, he said it wasn't enough to get by anymore and asked for more, so we started to give him some more. He kept asking for more money and more money and more money, and that's when we knew something was going on."
When Nick's family confronted the 19-year-old, he told them about his gambling habits.
"I didn't even know you could gamble online until then," Barbara said. "He wasn't even 21 yet."
When Nick wasn't able to curb his habit, his parents cut off the monthly allowance.
A sophomore at the time, he dropped classes so that he could take a second part-time job delivering pizzas.
That worked for a few months, but after a while there just wasn't enough money to go around.
With rent, utilities, groceries and a cell phone bill eating up most of his income, Nick decided to sell his truck, a gift given to him brand-new after graduation just two years earlier.
With the money, he bought a small, older compact car with nearly three times as many miles.
The $12,000 he pocketed from the deal funded his gambling habit, but within 18 months the money from the sale was gone, and Nick had also maxed out three credit cards.
"I went through it faster than I meant to," Nick said. "I know it was stupid to do that, and it really worried my family. I thought I was going to take that money and turn it into a million dollars. I still think I could. I'm not as stupid now as I was back then.
"I knew I was addicted back then. I guess I still am. It's just different now. I'm not costing anyone money but myself."
While the sizes of his bets have shrunk along with his bank account, James said the amount of Nick's time that's being consumed by gambling has only increased.
Much of that, Nick admits, is due to the convenience and accessibility of internet gambling.
Little research has been done on the impact of internet gambling among young people, but the issue is garnering more and more attention with each new young gambler like Nick.
"Clearly internet gambling has been the big thing on the rise in the gambling world for the last five years," said James Whelan, co-director of the institute for gambling education and research at The University of Memphis. "With the internet the only change is that it's much more accessible. You don't have to go out and find it. You can stay home."
Kevin O'Neill, deputy director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, said on the council's website the growth on internet gambling has obviously led to a congruent growth among computer-savvy college males.
"Internet gambling has increased from one site to 1,400 in six years," said O'Neill.
If compulsive gambling is affecting your life and you would like help call the Gambler's Anonymous national hotline at 1-800-GAMBLER.Gambler's Anonymous meetings are held locally in Christ United Methodist Church at 4488 Poplar Ave. on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Nick's compulsive gambling habit is beginning to have an even greater negative impact on his life. Since graduating six months ago with a degree in history, he has not applied for a job. And though his roller-coaster wins and losses have become less erratic, Whelan points out the potential for huge losses could be even greater.
"When you're still in school, you're less likely to be completely on your own," Whelan said. "You could lose all the money in your pocket and are you going to have a place to stay at night? "Those basic needs are still going to be taken care of. The dangerous aspect is when they don't have this safety net. Those same behaviors could cause them to crash and burn, and when you're on you own that can cost you everything.
