HLS To Go \u2018All In\u2019 Versus Yale<\/p>\n
Published On Thursday, October 11, 2007 2:19 AM
\nBy CHELSEA L. SHOVER
\nContributing Writer<\/p>\n
ARTICLE TOOLS: On the eve of Nov. 17, while much of the Harvard community is gearing up for \u201cThe Game\u201d against Yale, a handful of law school students will be prepping to play a very different sort of game against the same rival.<\/p>\n That night, members of the Harvard Law School (HLS) chapter of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) will challenge the society\u2019s Yale chapter in a poker tournament.<\/p>\n Founded by Weld Professor of Law Charles R. Nesson \u201960, GPSTS aims to \u201ccreate an open online curriculum centered on poker that will draw the brightest minds together,\u201d according to the group\u2019s online statement. The GPSTS currently has chapters organized at Stanford, UCLA, and Brown, in addition to Harvard and Yale.<\/p>\n Nesson and third-year law student Andrew M. Woods, the interim president of the HLS chapter, said that the group hoped to change the reputation of poker from one of illegal gambling to that of a valuable educational tool.<\/p>\n \u201cPoker teaches cognitive ability in a way we just don\u2019t have in education now,\u201d Woods said yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n While the group is not allowed to gamble during meetings, they spent their first meeting on Tuesday night discussing some of the finer points of the card game.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody that somehow thinks interest in poker is a bad thing would be convinced just by seeing and listening to these kids talk,\u201d said Nesson.<\/p>\n Woods said that the GPSTS would host several events open to the Harvard community over the semester. A panel discussion with poker champions Howard Lederer and Crandell Addington is expected to be held on Oct. 15. The group plans to hold a discussion on the dispute over online poker and a day-long conference on the educational value of poker in November.<\/p>\n The GPSTS also plans to launch a National Collegiate Poker Tournament in March.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will hope to capture the same spirit of the March Madness basketball tournament,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n The debate over the legality of poker focuses on whether it is a game of chance or a game of skill.<\/p>\n To study the dispute, GPSTS organizers said they plan to use duplicate poker decks, setting a deck up in the same way at ten different tables. This means that players are not only competing among the others at their table but also with their counterparts with the same hands at other tables.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a good way of really demonstrating and determining who has the most skill in a game,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n While a Harvard undergraduate chapter of GPSTS does not yet exist, two students\u2014Brian M. Wan \u201908 and Jason A. Caloras \u201908\u2014are in the process of creating one.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re going to be doing is trying to help legitimize poker,\u201d said Wan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HLS To Go \u2018All In\u2019 Versus Yale Published On Thursday, October 11, 2007 2:19 AM By CHELSEA L. SHOVER Contributing Writer ARTICLE TOOLS: E-mail this Article Printer Friendly Version Write a Letter to the Editor On the eve of Nov. 17, while much of the Harvard community is gearing up for \u201cThe Game\u201d against Yale, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,439,2176,2177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-harvard","category-poker","category-rhetorical-space","p1","y2007","m10","d11","h00"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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