POKER AND LIFE SKILLS

19 October 2007

Harvard takes a cerebral look at a great game


Poker aces like Howard Lederer and Crandell Addington will be sharing their thoughts with some intellectual powerhouses this week at Harvard University's newly formed Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) panel.

On the table: How poker skills translate into life skills, the first in a series of several such explorations planned by the Society. Also on the agenda is an examination of the World Trade Organisation dispute on Internet gambling and its consequences for the United States in a financial, commercial and global reputation sense.

Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and his students are the academics behind the GPSTS. The professor believes that poker is “an exceptional game of skill that can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education. The GPSTS recognizes that poker can be a metaphor for skills of life, business, politics, and international relations.”

Students from universities everywhere have shown interest in the GPSTS concept, and chapters are already being formed at Penn State, UCLA, USC, Stanford, Brown, Tufts, and Boston University. Chapters are also being formed at universities in Singapore, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Its goal is to have at least two dozen chapters by the end of the academic year.

GPSTS has three programmatic goals: offering poker strategic thinking workshops to schools and community centers, particularly in underprivileged neighborhoods; sponsoring team poker matches between law, business, and other professional schools; and conducting seminars, panel discussions, and conferences that explore poker as a means to teach strategic thinking and related public policy issues.

One of its major goals is to open an online curriculum centered around poker that will draw “the brightest minds together, both from within and outside of the conventional university setting, to promote open education and Internet democracy.”

Two more events will take place next month. On November 10, a panel exploring the educational utility of poker will feature Card Player magazine author and educator Jim McManus and poker ambassador Mike Sexton.

Then, on November 16 - the night before the Harvard-Yale football game - the Harvard GPSTS will host a poker tourney between Yale and Harvard. This is . A poker match will also take place between members of the GPSTS at USC and UCLA on November 30.

The Harvard chapter is planning two major events for next spring. The first is a poker educational workshop at the Smith Leadership Academy, a charter school in Dorchester, Massachusetts, that focuses on education for at-risk youths. The session will focus on ways educators can use poker to teach risk assessment, asset management, math, and negotiation skills.

The second will be called the Intercollegiate Poker Face-off. It will feature team competition from several universities around the country where the first GPSTS collegiate team champion will be crowned. This will likely take place during the NCAA Division I basketball tournament.

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