Poker 101 Added to Harvard Curriculum
Mentions: Poker Rooms
It consistently amazes me how the mainstream media can report a story, but clearly not understand what makes it newsworthy.
If you scan through the first five pages of most newspapers today, you will see an article about the "groundbreaking ideas" of Harvard Law professor, Charles Nesson, who announced that "Poker should be seen as an educational tool that can build strategic thinking skills" at an Internet conference in Singapore yesterday.
And I quote: "It teaches life skills, it teaches numeracy, risk assessment, resource management, and it teaches a lot about psychology... [Poker] teaches you to rely on yourself, assess the situation yourself and make the play," Nesson said.
Nesson is building a "global poker strategic thinking society" that will offer poker workshops to schools and sponsor inter-collegiate poker tournaments.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the idea of using poker as a tool to teach Americans the importance of probability theory its impact on risk analysis. Hopefully, by making meth more fun, American students will stop placing just below Latvia in standardized math tests. Moreover, I love the fact that Nesson took the daring step of promoting this idea at a school that is academically conservative.
What I do not like is the fact that the media is touting the idea itself as groundbreaking. Nesson is merely giving a voice to something that anybody who knows the game already recognizes. While online poker may be illegal in the US, every probability text book that I ever read, used poker scenarios to help demonstrate the utility of probability theory. What was newsworthy is that a Harvard Law Professor was willing to give voice to the fact that poker is a useful teaching tool, not Nesson's idea itself.
The media should give kudos to Nesson for the rights reasons: for being a risk taker, a non-conformist, a professor who was willing to state an obvious truth, although it might be politically incorrect.
Words of wisdom from Harvard U's Poker 101:
"Poker teaches the importance of not making the first bet in a game, a lesson that can be extrapolated to the advantages of not making the first offer in business negotiations."
"If I had to weigh the relative merits of different poker games with respect to teaching players how to think strategically, I believe that Texas Holdem would be at the top of the list."
While I do not think that you Nesson's ideas are revolutionary, I hope that they start a revolution.
Live life well,
Ronin
Play Online Poker
If you scan through the first five pages of most newspapers today, you will see an article about the "groundbreaking ideas" of Harvard Law professor, Charles Nesson, who announced that "Poker should be seen as an educational tool that can build strategic thinking skills" at an Internet conference in Singapore yesterday.
And I quote: "It teaches life skills, it teaches numeracy, risk assessment, resource management, and it teaches a lot about psychology... [Poker] teaches you to rely on yourself, assess the situation yourself and make the play," Nesson said.
Nesson is building a "global poker strategic thinking society" that will offer poker workshops to schools and sponsor inter-collegiate poker tournaments.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the idea of using poker as a tool to teach Americans the importance of probability theory its impact on risk analysis. Hopefully, by making meth more fun, American students will stop placing just below Latvia in standardized math tests. Moreover, I love the fact that Nesson took the daring step of promoting this idea at a school that is academically conservative.
What I do not like is the fact that the media is touting the idea itself as groundbreaking. Nesson is merely giving a voice to something that anybody who knows the game already recognizes. While online poker may be illegal in the US, every probability text book that I ever read, used poker scenarios to help demonstrate the utility of probability theory. What was newsworthy is that a Harvard Law Professor was willing to give voice to the fact that poker is a useful teaching tool, not Nesson's idea itself.
The media should give kudos to Nesson for the rights reasons: for being a risk taker, a non-conformist, a professor who was willing to state an obvious truth, although it might be politically incorrect.
Words of wisdom from Harvard U's Poker 101:
"Poker teaches the importance of not making the first bet in a game, a lesson that can be extrapolated to the advantages of not making the first offer in business negotiations."
"If I had to weigh the relative merits of different poker games with respect to teaching players how to think strategically, I believe that Texas Holdem would be at the top of the list."
While I do not think that you Nesson's ideas are revolutionary, I hope that they start a revolution.
Live life well,
Ronin
Play Online Poker
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