Towson University has its own poker club site courtesy of a college student who said he hopes to become the Mark Zuckerberg of online gambling.

Chandler Bator, a junior at Arizona State University, and ASU alumnus Anthony Bucca, began a Web project called “Your College Poker Club” for 160 colleges across the country, which gives college students a safe and legal environment to play casino games without losing money.

Your College Poker Club comes as a result of the federal government shutdown of multiple gambling websites such as FullTiltPoker.net.

Bator said he got the idea when a fellow student had to drop out of school because of all the money he lost on the online poker site PokerStars.net

“We wanted to make something that was safer for them to fulfill their need without the same type of risk involved with regular gambling sites,” he said.

When students sign up, they pay a fee and then are able to participate in poker tournaments, sports book betting, and other types of casino games. Bator said he hopes that as the sites pick up and membership increases, these games could have monetary rewards for students that finish in the top few spots.

“We will have daily and weekly prizes, and as our membership basis grows, our prizes will be able to grow,” Bator said. “We want to give out a $10,000 weekly seat to the World Series of Poker.”

As for what schools have access to the sites, the partners looked at institutions’ athletic involvement so that they could build off school spirit and eventually pit rival schools head-to-head in tournaments to see how schools stack up against one another.

“It will be fun to see how students take their school spirit and translate it into their usage of the site to try to perform better in the tournaments than students from other schools,” Bator said.

All 160 sites are set to be operational by the end of the month, according to Bator.