A New Book Explores the Educational and Social Benefits of Poker
Games are an important part of childhood development, and informal learning often takes place through a child’s game play. As children mature, the games they engage in and enjoy may get more complex, progressing from something like Candy Land to Checkers to Chess. The informal learning in these complex games increases as well, as do the social aspects.
Poker, whether played for chips, pennies, or serious money, is finding increased academic scrutiny as its continued popularity shows no sign of fading. James McManus, a writing and literature professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who teaches a course on the literature of poker, has a new book on the game: Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker
Rather than focusing on empirical studies surrounding the game, McManus is interested in what the literature of poker has to say. He’s fascinated with the game’s influence on powerful figures, including most of America’s past Presidents (Obama plays poker, too) and industrial figures such as Bill Gates.
He notes academic interest has definitely been piqued:
The Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society was founded in 2006 by the Harvard Law School professors Charles Nesson and Lawrence Lessig, the communications maven Jonathan Cohen, and Andrew Woods, a law student. Nesson had cofounded Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Lessig had started the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. Lessig was author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, while Cohen had built a variety of software and communications companies. Woods had graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he started the Bruin Casino Gaming Society, the first officially recognized student organization devoted to the study and teaching of poker.
Those at the GPSTS and elsewhere in academia remain convinced that poker holds high benefits for social and educational development. Much as video games have had to fight for academic legitimacy due to their ties to the entertainment industry, so too has poker had to fight due to its ties to gambling. Private poker parties for money are generally allowed in the States, but much conversation on the GPSTS site centers around legislative and court rulings on whether poker is primarily a game of chance or skill. If chance, it’s gambling and thus verboten in most circumstances. If skill, it’s tolerable to the regulatory powers that be.
From a pedagogical perspective, McManus makes the following observations:
Above all, [Harvard Law School Professor Charles] Nesson makes the case for using poker as a means to helping students understand the world from others’ points of view. In his own classes, he trains lawyers “to see in the game a language for thinking about and an environment for experiencing the dynamics of strategy in dispute resolution.” At the simplest level, he shows how the game can help middle-school students understand percentages and budget making, as well as how to “read” their opponents.
We’re probably a ways off from the day where a middle school teacher can include a few hands of poker in her lesson plans, and not have to explain why to administrators and parents. Nonetheless, this book goes a long way toward legitimizing poker as a valid research subject.
Tags: Chronicle of Higher Education, James McManus
Gambling, Game Discussion, Poker | John Rice | 
January 3, 2010 1:35 pm
