Poker used as an educational tool

There are two poker tables set up in William Snyder’s math classroom at George Mason High School and both are buzzing. At one, 17 year old Daniel Fletcher is trying to decide what to do with his four of hearts and two of clubs.

Fletcher is part of a growing trend to take poker from casinos to classrooms in a drive to get kids to use card-table concepts for math and logical-reasoning lessons.

After his pile of chips grew substantially throughout last week, he inadvertently summed up the exercise: "I don't know whether math class is helping me with poker, or whether poker is helping me in math class,"

The poker club Fletcher is part of is sponsored by his school and since it started in September has become one of the most popular extracurricular activities offered by the high school.

The club has also resulted in a popular debate resurfacing. Anti-gambling groups are questioning whether the club is bringing up unhealthy gambling habits in the kids participating. Gambling has already been recognised as a problem amongst teenagers in the US.

Principal Tyrone Byrd has defended their decision by saying: "We know the kids could play outside of school, but when they're here, we have the opportunity to show them how to play responsibly and to show them how the game relates to their education," said Mason Principal Tyrone Byrd.

Byrd set up ground rules to protect the teenagers: no real money is allowed to be used and the emphasis must be on the game’s educational relevance.

Universities have been on this wavelength for some time with many offering classes that deconstructed the game’s “marvellous architecture” as Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson puts it.

Nesson’s classes are about more than basic statistics, but about understanding the anatomy of reasoning and human behaviour - "about teaching them to contend in a contentious environment."

With his students Nesson formed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society in 2007 and the club has since expanded to a number of other top universities. Its members aim to deliver their mission statement that poker, "can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education."
 
Anti-gambling activists are insisting that these lessons are not suited to high school students who might get heavily influenced by high-stakes poker and celebrity players and start playing on the very easily accessible online poker rooms.

The Annenberg Public Policy Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania released a study last month that found that 15 percent of boys between 14 and 17 years old gamble using cards at least once a month.

 So while there is no doubt that the game is popular amongst teenagers and also holds a large amount of potential for being used as an educational tool perhaps the emphasis should not be on whether or not to offer the game at schools but how the game can be taught so that teenagers can play it, enjoy it and learn from it in a healthy and constructive environment.