poker is quintescentially an american game, american invention, universal in its appeal, open as the frontier to anyone to learn the skill of bid and call and bluff and raise and fold. no better game to learn how to win and lose and how to feel about it. no finer way to come to terms with your personal relationship to risk and resource, finding balance in the flow of signals in the brain for defense, for aggression, for neutrality, women, men, old, young, every race, every religion, a moment to learn a lifetime to master, understanding that the ante and the blinds buy you the privilege of neutrality in the choice you have to fold, but every time you fold you pay a little. you need a little aggression to offset this leak in the assets you have to live with. you start to feel and see that this is how you play not just this game but the game of life.
here’s email from amwoods at hlcentral
“Andrew M. Woods”
to me
show details
7:25 pm (7 hours ago)
Professor-
I happened upon this the other day, and have been meaning to forward it to you:
http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2006/03/16/News/FirstTimer.Wins.Charity.Poker.Tournament-1688977.shtml
While the article isn’t exactly a stirring defense of the importance of skill in poker – a first time player won the tournament, you may be interested to notice at the bottom of paragraph 2 the article describes the faculty participation in the public interest charity tournament. That faculty included one Professor Charles Nesson, “who hung in for several rounds before being knocked out by 1L Andrew Woods”. 🙂
(While I may have put you out, you do look better in the photo – they only got the side of me…)
-Andrew
——————————–
Andrew M. Woods
Director of Events
HL Central
(310) 254-5218
amwoods@law.harvard.edu
as we spoke last night poker university took shape
enquiry into the genius of the game top down
professor and professor with sister annie
andy bloch producer
full tilt on a table of ten
avatars driven by students of all ages in classrooms round the globe
global classrooms to engage our poker curriculum in which the culmination course is tournaments
open to developing nations as an expression of american democracy
eon here
the crazy guy of lessig’s dedication
let poker be the message that goes out through libraries and classrooms
it’s the spirit of america we are fighting for
assume you are playing poker with a fundamentalist
schelling’s madman at the door
are you bargaining with him or is he bargaining with you
this is a better game than the game with bombs and guns
people who make bombs and guns are the enemy
why prefer their game to ours
we make the bombs and guns and the markets into which to sell them
we are on a road to blowing ourselves apart if we can’t figure out how to find our norms
one thing you can say about a fundamentalist
their action is grounded in deep spirit
twisted we may think to evil ends yet spirit nonetheless
suppose a poker game between the avatar of our spirit and the avatar of his
what would be our conversation
what have i got that he wants that i can give him
what is he looking for
he says he’s looking for one thing but you know he is looking for another
suppose the chips in the game are the minds of people
the question in each individual mind which spirit speaks truth in its understanding of the world
quick
the stick
fight
youre right
so okay let’s get to it
teresa and librarians of the world
eIFL.net consortium of consortia of libraries
communia thematic network
where better to assemble to play a global online poker game than is community libraries and schools starting with solar power electricity, hardware to structure and control the flow of electric bits, connection to the net and thus to UNIVERSITY
the berkman center has a grant from the state department of the united states of america to teach democracy. american democracy is spirit in US to express.
as i type into this blog i am listening to the recording of our poker meeting before the formal meeting began, low murmers and talk of separate conversations with lovely jokes. annie tells the story of a man addicted to water, was drinking eight gallons a day, he died, and me telling the story of last year’s public service poker tournament pictured above in which andrew m woods knocked me out, how we couldn’t do it this year because of government regulation.
uploading it to z share
hope it works
i’ll bet there are some folks out there deep enough into the game to listen to poker pros talking poker to each other
yes it does! here it is: http://www.zshare.net/audio/poker1-mp3.html
last night another berkman book party, david weinberger, everything is miscellaneous, a gift to all librarians as we come to see internet as library. david, a poker question. i have written to game theorists asking them how they classify texas hold’em poker in the taxonomy of their rigorous systematic way of understanding our reality. in answer to the conceptual question of relationship of one think to another miscellaneous doesn’t tell us much. are you speaking to scientists as well as to librarians?
