Global Poker Strategic Thinking Societies Hit the Ground Running
Back on August 14 I blogged about Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson’s plan to organize poker strategic thinking societies at universities and secondary schools. At an international conference called State of Play on August 19 in Singapore, Nesson advanced the idea that poker can teach everything from basic life skills to war games at military colleges.
Now students at several top universities are forming poker clubs as part of Nesson’s Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) in preparation for a national collegiate team poker tournament and conference next year that’s aimed at promoting poker’s educational benefits.
Nesson hopes that poker societies will reach the point where they have an NCAA-style championship in team poker for American universities. Nesson also envisions an open online curriculum centered on poker that will draw the brightest minds together to promote open education and Internet democracy.
Harvard Law School formally approved the GPSTS as an official student organization and sixty-two Harvard Law students signed up. GPSTS chapters are now being formed at Penn State, UCLA, USC, Stanford, Brown, Tufts, and Boston University, as well as internationally at universities in Singapore, Finland, and the United Kingdom. The goal is to have at least two dozen chapters by the end of the academic year.
Harvard is planning several academic panels to explore poker as a tool for learning. The first panel is set for Oct. 15 and will focus on life skills, with Howard Lederer and Crandall Addington on the panel.
On Oct. 16, Harvard's GPSTS will discuss one of the topics I’ve written about extensively over the past two years: the World Trade Organization dispute over the legality of online poker and other forms of online gaming.
The first school-versus-school poker matchup will take place November 16 between the Harvard and Yale chapters of the society the night before the Harvard-Yale football game. On November 30, USC and UCLA will have a similar match on the eve of their football game.
An Intercollegiate Poker Face-off is planned for spring 2008, as universities face off to crown a collegiate team champion.
posted by Lou Krieger @ 12:09 PM
3 Comments:
Although only an amateur dabbler in the game, I do believe poker can teach you many life skills right from understanding people to general good manners.
The most important may be the lesson of making a decision and living by it. There's no going back. It is done and dusted and you are on to the next one.
It is good to see the game being pushed in the academic arena and hopefully it can shake off the tag of being a gambling game for idiots.
It certainly is not!
Dingz! I'll probably be applying to Harvard Law and BU Law next fall, so they'll have another member. :-)
Lou:
Do you think that Howard's economic incentive skews or detracts from the credibility of the argument at all?
Shell
mushmemoirs.blogspot.com
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