A calm and collected British secret agent enters a large room. He takes a drink from the bar, calmly sits at the far end of a large table and is dealt his hand of cards. Pushing a multi-colored chip to the center of the table, he makes his first move. The pressure rises as the stakes increase, chip by chip. Our hero pulls a straight flush, slicing the tension with five cards of the same suit in numerical order. A cheer breaks out as his disgruntled opponents thrown down their cards in defeat, and our hero saunters away with a lady on his arm.
This quintessential James Bond scene perfectly embodies the risk and excitement associated with the world of poker. While some think of the game as simply an entertaining ritual for a guys’ or girls’ night in, others view the game as a strategic learning tool. Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson and student Andrew Woods have taken the game out of spy movies and into lecture halls across the country, hoping to show the valuable lessons of logic and opposition that exist behind the thrill.
GETTING STARTED
Andrew Woods, founder of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, has been an avid poker player from a young age.
“I’ve been playing poker pretty regularly since high school,” Woods said. “I started playing with my friends when we would hang out. As an undergrad at UCLA, I started playing poker a bit more competitively, and began to play for some money.”
Woods said his first interest in the science behind poker came from studying the game as a student.
“I started out not being very good at the game,” he said. “So I spent some time studying up on the game, and it really improved me as a player.”
Through playing and studying, Woods realized there was much behind the game that people could to apply to other areas of life, but it wasn’t until he went to Harvard Law that he began to actually use this idea.
At a charity poker game sponsored by the university, Woods met Nesson.
“I knocked him out the game,” Woods said. “After that I took his class on evidence. One night we went out to dinner and discussed the parallels that we saw between skills used in poker and law.”
After a popular preliminary meeting to discuss the topic of poker and law, Woods and Nesson created GPSTS.
“We saw that college students loved it,” Woods said, “and it was the natural progression to start the organization. We wanted to allow students and educators both to get together on the subject and explore it.”
THE MISSION
According to a press release by Nesson on the GPSTS website, the organization views poker skills as a classroom skill set for “all levels of academia,” especially his students, who are future lawyers and entrepreneurs.
“I teach [students] to play poker and to see in the game a language for thinking about and an environment for experiencing the dynamics of structured confrontation,” he said.
Woods said the principles involved in poker and law are very similar.
“The study of law is fundamentally a question about people and about conflict-resolution,” he said. “Evidence proves the truth in law and poker resonates on every level in that.”
In an interview, Nesson explained that the ability to understand people’s personalities and motivation is equally as important at the poker table as it is in court.
“It comes down to being able to read people,” he said, “and poker is a game that is all about understanding others.”
While the GPSTS is a fairly new initiative, the group has the makings of chapters at seven schools across the country and planned lectures at two schools.
In the past, lectures have included subjects such as application of poker skills or international law regarding poker playing, but the academic discussions are just a portion of the organization’s activities.
“We hold fun games in casual settings,” Woods said. “We’ve also began to hold inter-collegiate poker tournaments, the most recent one being between [Harvard] and Yale.”
Woods said he was surprised with the turnout at GPSTS events, with attendees far surpassing what the organization originally predicted.
“We seem to have struck a chord with people,” he said.
STATEWIDE EDUCATION
In the wake of recent support from Gov. Deval Patrick, Massachusetts is close to deciding whether it will build three new casinos in the state, which already boasts one of the largest lotteries in the nation.
According to the website for the Massachusetts Family Institute, a group in opposition to the potential casinos, 7.9 million teenagers currently have problematic or pathologic gambling compulsions. The website also notes Massachusetts lottery revenues were $4.5 billion in 2006, accounting for 16 percent of the commonwealth’s total $26 billion budget.
“Casinos in Connecticut report that 25 to 40 percent of their clientele are Massachusetts residents,” said Margot Cahoon, a spokeswoman at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling. “We are a state that is at serious risk for gambling compulsion. Our lottery is one of the biggest in the nation and we have a large percentage of our citizens addicted to gambling”.
Cahoon worries the GPSTS and similar groups are spreading the wrong message.
“The MCCG already has its own education program in place for middle school students,” Cahoon said, “which teaches the exact opposite of the GPSTS: that the odds of winning in gambling are extremely slim.”
The program, titled “Facing the Odds,” teaches children about statistics, probability and critical thinking through the use of gambling.
According to the MCCG website, the curriculum, which was developed in conjunction with the Harvard Medical School Division on Addictions, aims to provide “an opportunity . . . to increase student interest in mathematics and concurrently to diminish the likelihood of the development of addictive behaviors.
“One thing we noticed was that the earlier in life that people are exposed to gambling, the more likely they are to have problems later on in their life,” Cahoon said. “Our goal is to try and enable kids to understand all the harms associated with the gambling lifestyle, from an early age.”
THE DEBATE CONTINUES
Groups like GPSTS say their actions are purely educational, helping people take values and lessons from the game that will help them throughout their lives.
“We never sponsor games for money,” Woods said. “Our intercollegiate tournaments are all free and the point isn’t to gamble. It is to play a game and try to focus and hone your skills while doing so.”
Nesson and Woods both said poker falls outside the realm of normal gambling. Unlike slot machines or lottery, there is no chance involved in poker; the risk is only as great as the players’ skills.
“Poker is a game about strategy, not about luck,” Woods said. “Whether it is the cards you are dealt or how you read your opponent, it is a zero-sum game. Your skill will determine your outcome.”
Cahoon said even if poker is different from other forms of gambling, caution should be applied when trying to teach lessons from the game.
“I’m not sure what skills are taught,” she said, “but there are probably other ways to teach those methods. It is a risk-seeking adventure, but when people ignore side warnings and don’t realize that gambling is a risk, that’s when things get out of control.”
Woods said he understands why public health workers might fear gambling, although the GPSTS has yet to receive much harsh criticism.
“[Gambling] is a very serious issue,” Woods said. “It should be dealt with common sense. Society has so far done a poor job of assessing its options. Getting rid of gambling doesn’t make sense. We need to allow people to confront their issues in a public health setting.”
While the GPSTS doesn’t have a legislative agenda, Woods said he thinks the Commonwealth’s casino plan will be a “good way to get some much-needed revenue into the state.”
Patrick has proposed legislation that would create the casinos in exchange for criminalizing poker in the state, a move Woods said he is against, but Cahoon supports.
“This could be very beneficial,” Cahoon said. “Online poker and gambling have taken what used to be a social event and made it something solitary. Just like people say never drink alone, never gamble alone. When you are all alone on the computer, there is no one there to tell you to stop.”