There's trouble in the river cities of Concord and Manchester and in plenty of other towns. It begins with "P" all right, but we're talking about poker, not pool. The national craze for Texas Hold 'Em, a version of seven-card stud, promises to help poker surpass bingo in popularity.

As Monitor reporter Eric Moskowitz discovered, the chance to earn up to $10,000 per night has charitable organizations lining up to sponsor Texas Hold 'Em poker games. And it's not just the old standbys where one would expect to find a friendly card game on a Friday night that are welcoming gamblers.

The Belknap Mill Society held one game and made twice what it earned at its four-day book sale. Similar organizations are, to borrow a term from other card games, following suit. The Lake Winnipesaukee Historical Society runs games often, and a poker tournament will be held soon to benefit the charitable fund created to honor the late Concord city councilor David Poulin.

For a small fee paid to the state, charitable organizations can hold up to 10 non-bingo gambling events per year, everything from meat raffles to Monte Carlo nights. The poker phenomenon is still too new and too poorly regulated to get a handle on how much is being wagered each week. But if the games are giving bingo a run for the money, plenty of cash is changing hands.

This past fiscal year, players of charity bingo and Lucky Seven games, who are predominantly women over age 50, wagered $90 million in New Hampshire. Of that, $69 million was paid out in prizes. The state took in $2 million in fees plus the 7 percent tax on winner-take-all bingo pots that can, on occasion, top $100,000. Charitable organizations netted about $11 million. Expenses, including the payment of fees to consultants, who can in some cases take up to 50 percent of the profit, came to $10 million.

Since games of chance are only legal if run for the benefit of a charity, prompt reporting, strict accounting and tough laws are needed to guarantee that a fair share of the poker profits goes to charities and not so much to the entrepreneurs who organize and promote the games.

Unlike bingo, poker games draw a crowd that runs heavily to young males. Many of them were attracted to the game by the million-dollar tournaments aired regularly on cable TV. Two of the best players on the big-time televised circuit, Howard Lederer and his sister Annie Duke, cut their poker teeth in Concord. Their father, Richard Lederer, was a longtime St. Paul's School teacher and Monitor language columnist.

In local games, players typically pay $100 to play for a first-place prize of $1,000, $2,500 or more. According to forms submitted to the state Office of Charitable Trusts, $436,000 was wagered at just one series of 10 games held for On the Road to Recovery, a Manchester charity. Of that, $317,000 was paid out in prize money, the charity's share came to just under $57,000 and expenses averaged $6,400 per game

The proliferation of poker games -which are illegal when played for money in homeowner's basement -means that the Legislature faces some decisions. First, it must decide whether it should continue to permit what amounts to poker parlors running almost nightly to raise money for one charitable group or another.

We'll hold our cards on that one for now, but it does seem that the games present less of a potential societal problem than the state-run lottery and ubiquitous scratch tickets. If the Legislature opts to allow the games to continue, it should certainly tax them and cut the state in on the action.