21st of February 2010

A new discussion on poker as a skill game

Last year’s attempts to bring the legalisation of poker on to the ballot in Massachusetts may have failed but fans of the game have not given up on lobbying for a more sensible classification of poker as a game of skill.

Tuesday next week will see a hearing in the Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee of the east coast state that will feature a discussion of whether poker should legally be considered a game of skill. And supporting the measure is the influential Harvard-based Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS).

According to Andrew Woods of the GPSTS, the proposed bill will remove poker legally from its present classification as a game of chance. The game is currently defined as a lottery, which Woods feels is inappropriate as well as being inaccurate.

That could all change if Bill 4069 sponsored by Massachusetts State Representative Brian Wallace – a Democrat - has his way. The measure is pointed in its language in declaring poker a game of skill, which could effectively remove it from the restrictions of gambling as a game of chance.

Speaking for the GPSTS, Woods said: “We’re interested in being involved because the bill follows our goals and interests. The bill very precisely states that poker is a game of skill. Across the country, you’re seeing a lot of states coming up against the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and instead looking at intrastate poker.

“They can’t get around the federal law, but they can allow it within their own state.”

The GPSTS was founded by the widely respected Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson and uses poker to teach strategic thinking, geopolitical analysis, risk assessment, and money management. GPSTS chapters can be found coast-to-coast, including at Dartmouth, New York University, UCLA, the University of Michigan, and Stanford, and Nesson has featured in several high profile discussions and debates on the chance vs. skill argument.

More courts are supporting poker as a game of skill.

In Denver, the state's raid of a $20 Texas Hold 'Em tournament — and subsequent defeat for prosecutors during trial — could lead to a rewrite of Colorado's poker laws. According to the Denver Post, a group of five poker fans playing over a pot of $600 were jailed for illegal gambling. But instead of paying a $100 fine, the defendants have decided to take the case to court. In January, a Weld County jury acquitted one of the defendants who was the first to go to trial. The state has appealed.

In Pennsylvania, a judge tossed out charges against two people accused of illegal gambling after determining that "Texas Hold 'Em poker is a game where skill predominates over chance." The state has appealed the ruling.

In South Carolina, a judge ruled last month that poker is a game of skill, which could prevent future prosecutions of poker players. (The ruling, however, didn't help the defendants in that case because they violated other laws by running a gambling house.)

In the meantime, South Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, is introducing pro-poker legislation to the state’s legislature in the hopes of slowly beginning to overturn the antiquated 1802 gambling law. According to the He has established two dates for hearings this week for two bills. The first bill looks to legalize home poker games that exclude rake that accrues income for the house, as well as odds or a house bank. The second bill intends to legalize charity events that involve “casino night” types of activities, including raffles, to raise money for charity events. The bills are 535 and 560, respectively, and are awaiting Congressional action.

The question of whether poker is a game of skill or chance, and what that has to do with its legality, is being debated anew in courtrooms in Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes about the controversy in "Legal status of poker: Is it a game of skill or chance?"

Gaining the upper hand
CharLaw translates poker tactics to the courtroom

Published in The Charlotte Weekly by Jonathan Reed

Students crowd around three tables outside the mock courtroom at Charlotte School of Law for a recent Saturday friendly poker game against Elon University. Onlookers can’t tell from the T-shirts and jeans worn by the nearly 30 students and teachers gathered at the school, but poker isn’t the only high-stakes game being taught within these walls.

The gathering was sparked by CharLaw professor John Kunich, an avid poker player (he’s made his way deep into the World Series of Poker twice in the last three years) who came to the affair dressed to the nines. Kunich’s “Stan Laurel” getup is a trademark of his poker circuit matches– he uses the “nutty professor”act as a feint.

In the past year, Kunich has found a way to blend his love of the law with his passion for the gentleman’s game. His inspiration came from one of Kunich’s former professors– Harvard Law School’s Charles Nesson, one of the founders of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society.

Nesson’s idea is to extrapolate lessons from poker into the real world. The legal field was fertile ground, though Kunich admitted it wasn’t until he attended an alumni event that he realized the parallels. Now Kunich infuses his lessons with
tips from the pro circuit.

"It’s a great way to get a lot of people involved and teach some lessons in negotiation tactics,” Kunich said. “We're approaching the law in a way that’s innovative and means something on a gut level.”

Playing your hand
One of the key tenets of the ideology is using what you know to get the upper hand Kunich said most lawyers are aware of their own facts and witnesses, but that isn’t enough. You also must understand what “cards” your opponent holds. "A good poker player, like a good lawyer, thinks about what the other side might have and why they are still in (the game). You figure out if you have the advantage or not,” he explained. “That’s taking it to the next level, and a lot of people never get beyond that in law or in poker. So they lose.

The strategy also involves carefully planning your next move. The blunders,Kunich said, come from losing emotional control ("going tilt" in poker parlance) or relying too much on bluffing. Both can tarnish one’s reputation in the courtroom or at the table, so focus and maturity are important attributes for the students to master.

CharLaw student Scott Hart said his peers all are competitive and tasked with finding ways of applying poker tactics to their future legal practices. “You always want to know how strong your case is and how much you can throw your weight around, be it with chips or facts and evidence.”

In the broader spectrum, Hart continued, lawyers have to learn to choose cases based on what they wager will come before a judge. “It’s a lot like when you play (cards); you watch how many are folding and who’s still in the hand,” he said.

Nick Harrison, leader of CharLaw’s poker tactics chapter, said the parallels aren’t necessarily direct. “I really think it’s learning how to deal with people, and learning to read people. You get into a situation and get the result you want. For instance, I might not have the best cards or hand, but I need to know how to play it.”

Upping the ante
The match between Elon and CharLaw was hampered by pending law exams but Kunich said that soon he hopes to involve other in-state law schools in the poker rivalry. The CharLaw chapter already has a trophy – a Travelocity gnome with a plaque to recognize the winners. For a school that started with a roll of the dice – CharLaw just opened its own campus for the start of its third year – Kunich said the poker matches offer a chance for CharLaw to put its name on
the law-school map.

“It’d be one thing if (students) just had a poker club playing cash games every week, but with this we have a chance to play some Ivy League schools,” Kunich said. “We can’t compete with the prestige level of our faculty or how long we’ve been in existence, but we can compete on this level.

“(Those schools) can come and see what we have here. It’s a chance to spread the word about what we’re doing here, in this early stage in our history.”

From one of Professor Nesson's CyberOne students comes this pearl of wisdom about the intersection between poker and law:

I loved the idea that poker is to women what law school was to women, and I totally agree. I have always been too intimidated to play, and when I've seen girls play poker before, they were given allowances and extra chips to make up for the fact that they were female. Interestingly, nobody thought that was weird, but it always made me feel as if I shouldn't try to join. However, after playing a few times in your class and at your home, I found that I am perfectly capable of understanding the game, and I look forward to making it a new hobby. I tried to remember that when I was sitting in corporations, one area of the law that intimidates me, only slightly less than finance. However, I found that if I just listened, without worrying about whether or not I would be able to follow, and if I went in with the assumption that was just as smart as everyone in the room, that I really didn't have trouble at all. It was an important realization and will be a very useful lesson in the future.

The recent seizure of 141 poker-related domain names as "illegal gambling devices" by a district court in Kentucky is a perfect example of the sort of bizarre, far-reaching, and unpleasant consequences that result when online poker is criminalized and government feels compelled to regulate online what they cannot in person.

GPSTS founder and president Charles Nesson, however, is willing to place his bet on online poker. Read his op/ed on the topic after the jump.

Partnership places GPSTS at the cutting edge of strategic gaming as a rehabilitation tool under difficult conditions.

The GPSTS has always believed that poker specifically, and strategic gaming generally, are useful as teaching tools, and that under the right conditions, strategic games can help change lives. This summer, GPSTS founder and president Charles Nesson decided to put that idea to the test, and in the most unlikely of places: the Tower Street Adult Correctional Facility in Kingston, Jamaica. By partnering with Students Expressing Truth, Jamaica's most successful and innovative charitable reform organization, the GPSTS is making it its mission to show that strategic gaming not only teaches, but heals.

The partnership is in some senses a natural one for the GPSTS: Prof. Nesson has enjoyed over a decade of fruitful professional intercourse with Students Expressing Truth and its governor and director, Kevin Wallen. In that time Prof. Nesson, personally and under the auspices of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, has provided valuable theoretical expertise and insight to the S.E.T. Foundation, and has helped the organization to grow.

But why? Why sponsor the teaching of poker and other forms of strategic gaming in a prison? There is no better way to assess how rehabilitative and hope-inspiring a strategy is than by siting it in an extreme context. The three prisons in which the S.E.T. Foundation operates — the Tower Street, South Camp, and Fort Augusta maximum-security correctional facilities — are Jamaica's most overcrowded, and house some of Jamaica's least fortunate citizens. Most of them are driven to lives of crime due to lack of employment opportunities and marketable skills in a very volatile economy; the system of laws governing them is British postcolonial and is structurally unforgiving of transgressions. Long prison terms are the norm, and the climate, unmitigated, is brutal.

The S.E.T. Foundation restores hope and dignity to the inmates of these facilities over a several years' long process of discussion and education. In particular, the S.E.T. Foundation specializes in giving its members lessons in media production and other aspects of information technology, skills that are rare and highly sought after in Jamaica. But frequently the teaching of skill in itself is not enough: program participants' entire world views require change.

By playing strategic games such as poker, S.E.T. program participants acquire the intellectual toolset needed to survive and thrive in a challenging world. To date, the program enjoys a startling zero percent recidivism rate. The GPSTS's partnership with the S.E.T. foundation will allow S.E.T. to expand into the Jamaican public school system — educating and providing hope pre-emptively — and provides the GPSTS with a testbed and audience for instruction through strategic gaming. It is with the greatest of pleasure that the GPSTS has chosen to sponsor the program.

The public hearing at the State House on the Massachusetts Casino Expansion bill was packed — standing room only — but GPSTS founder and president Charlie Nesson stayed around until 9:30 PM to speak out in opposition to the bill, which will criminalize online poker playing if passed.

Nesson was also party to an interesting exchange with Deval Patrick, who was first to testify at the hearing.

You can read his testimony after the jump.

At 8:30 this morning, a contingent of supporters from the Harvard Law School chapter of the GPSTS joined members of the Massachusetts Poker Players' Alliance at a rally in front of the State House to protest Governor Deval Patrick's casino bill. Charlie Nesson, founder and president of the GPSTS, addressed the crowd about the dangers of criminalizing online poker, which a provision in section 15 of the bill would make punishable by fines of up to $25,000 — and two years' imprisonment.

Poker is not a crime
Don't let Governor Patrick's casino bill make it one