Poker in the News

The Economist has a good article giving the bird's eye view on the last five years of growth in poker's popularity, driven largely by increased access to poker games online, as well as the innovation of the hole-card camera pioneered by the World Poker Tour, which for the first time allowed spectators to see the private cards of players during real-time play. That made the game a spectator event, and the Internet drew people in.

One thing I learned while reading this article is that Harvard Law Professor, Charles Nesson, has started a university organization entitled Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS), a somewhat awkward sounding acroynym with a heart full of gold. The society has four programmatic goals.

1. To encourag the continuing development of chapters at universities across the world.
2. To conduct academic seminars, panel discussions and lectures that explore poker as a means to teach strategic thinking and related public policy issues.
3. To sponsor team poker matches between law, business and other professional schools.
4. To hold academic conferences to focus on the educational applications of poker strategic thought and related fields.

How awesome. This is much needed, since the recent legislation has done much damage to poker's practicality in the United States. Most people in the US have a low view of games having practical value for people, let alone being actually a net positive experience for most people. The debate over video games, played out by politicians running for President and/or re-election, is an example of how little the median voter thinks of games, in general. But this goes even moreso for games that have probabilitistic outcomes, such as poker. Unlike chess, randomness plays a very significant role in poker, which makes many un-educated people lump it with games of pure chance like roulette or craps, which can be shown to be impossible to beat, even in the longrun, because of the statistical advantage (albeit small) that the casino has over the player. This is the case for poker, too, in a way, but that edge does not come because anyone artificially manipulates the odds in their favor, like a casino. Rather, the edge is attained through experience, skill and education about poker fundamentals, probability theory, game theory and basic psychology. It's for this reason, in fact, that poker players tend to get Zen-like about the game, comparing it to "real life" in the sense that "anything can happen," and so one must choose from a set of strategies a strategy that is optimal given the incomplete information of the game, and the constant updating of information and repricing of risk that must occur in real time as the player receives a constant flow of information based on opponent's actions.

So, of course, I wrote the GPSTS and inquired about starting a chapter at my university. As my university is an evangelical Christian university, with a history of moralistic bans on things like dancing and drinking, it might not actually happen. I've noticed that many people here share that religious tradition's view of games as either a waste of time (morally neutral) or spiritually and intellectually damaging (morally bad). But, it is for that reason that one should try to present the case for the game, because for too long Christians have tended to dismiss activities that they do not understand as immoral. One only need to Robert Johnston's excellent Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, another poorly titled book in my opinion, which expertly takes the reader through the challenge that film as an artform had for the institutional Christian church, and the different viewpoints that eventually formed as a result of that clash. Perhaps it's time for a Christian, informed, perspective on poker, too.