Poker as Higher Education

I firmly believe that a good teacher can use anything, any resource as a tool for learning.

Including, according to a professor at Harvard, the game of poker.

A Harvard Law School professor and a group of his students formed an organization this fall – the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society – dedicated to demonstrating that poker has educational benefits. They argue that the game, which is probability-based and requires risk assessment, situational analysis and a gift for reading people, can be an effective teaching tool, whether for middle school math or in business and law classes.

“I see poker as one tool to develop the kind of cognitive abilities that a lot of people don’t seem to be developing on their own, whether because those skills aren’t taught effectively in school or because they’re not learning it from their parents,” Mr. Woods said. So many of his Harvard Law classmates were or had been serious poker players, he said, “that I had to wonder what role poker played in all of us getting here.”

So, who am I to argue? Learning something about probability and odds certainly would be good for kids, not to mention adults.

However, it’s a little scary to imagine that there are lawyers playing their profession like a hand of Texas Hold-Em.

education, poker, harvard, learning