Four-time poker champion Howard Lederer makes a plush living playing cards. His scholarly calm at the table has earned him the title 'The Professor,' along with $3.3 million in tournament prize money.
Just don't call him lucky. To describe poker as anything but a game of skill, he says, 'is just wrong.'
Now poker fans in academe are jumping in to help prove that point, most recently with a daylong 'strategy session' at the Harvard Faculty Club bringing together poker pros like Mr. Lederer, game theorists, statisticians, law students and gambling lobbyists.
'The purpose of this meeting,' said Harvard University Law School professor Charles Nesson, kicking things off beneath the dusty visages of long-dead Harvard poets and divines, 'is to legitimate poker.' To do that, Prof. Nesson and his fellows hope to show, statistically, philosophically, legally and otherwise, that poker is a game in which skill predominates over chance.
It is the straight flush of poker theory -- and just about as elusive.
Not my game, but more interesting than most college sports...
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