Harvard Legal Scholars Launch Global Poker Strategic Thinking

SINGAPORE, Aug 21 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --

Poker Strategic Thinking Societies Forming at Universities in Several Countries

Workshops and Competitions Will Use Poker to Teach Life Skills in Secondary Schools and Graduate Programs

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson announced the formation of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) at the State of Play Conference in Singapore today.

GPSTS will offer poker strategic thinking workshops to secondary schools and community centers; sponsor team poker matches between law, business and other graduate-level programs; and conduct seminars and conferences that explore poker as a means to teach strategic thinking.

Chapters of the GPSTS are being organized at prominent universities beginning with Harvard. Inquiries have already been fielded from Brown University, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The National University of Singapore, and The Icelandic Poker Association on behalf of Icelandic universities. These and other "poker strategic thinking societies" at universities and secondary schools around the world will use poker as an educational tool to teach fundamental life skills such as numeracy, probability, resource management, risk assessment and ways to positively channel aggression.

Plans call for GPSTS chapters to be formed by January, pointing toward an intercollegiate team poker tournament in March of 2008.

"The formation of GPSTS comes out of using poker as a highly effective educational tool at Harvard," said Professor Nesson. "We believe that poker can be a superior means of teaching critical life skills including negotiation, resource management, risk assessment and numeracy."

Charles Nesson is the William F. Weld Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Founder and Co-Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is joined on the GPSTS board by Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, who is the author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and a previous Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Nesson is conducting a poker strategic thinking workshop at The State of Play Conference, an annual meeting of the virtual gaming community, where he will also deliver a paper on virtual learning. Press and media representatives are invited to attend both the workshop and lecture. Professor Nesson and colleagues will be available for interviews.

About GPSTS

Founded by Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society views poker as a game of skill that can be used as a teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education. The concept is to use poker to teach basic life skills such as strategic thinking, geopolitical analysis, risk assessment, and resource management. The goal is to create an open online poker community that will draw the brightest minds together, both within and outside of the conventional university setting, to promote open education and Internet democracy.

For more information, please go to www.gpsts.net or write to globalpoker@gmail.com

About State of Play V: Building the Global Metaverse

This conference on virtual worlds will be held August 19-22, 2007 in Singapore. It is organized by New York Law School, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Trinity University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The conference invites experts across disciplines to discuss the future of cyberspace and the impact of these new immersive, social online environments on education, law, politics and society.

For more information please go to www.nyls.edu/pages 2396.asp

CONTACT: Jonathan Cohen of GPSTS,

+1-203-722-1858,

globalpoker@gmail.com; or

Alexandra McDougald of The Weiser Group,

+1-202-291-0750,

amcdougald@weisergroup.com,

for GPSTS

Web site: http://www.gpsts.net

http://www.nyls.edu/pages/2396.asp

SOURCE: Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society

ASIA PULSE