Harvard is studying poker

There’s probably a strong likelihood that some students play poker on most college campuses. It just seems less likely that they’d be studying it at Harvard.

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.

This is more than just an effort to get respect.

The skill debate has been a preoccupation in poker circles since September, when Congress barred the use of credit cards for online wagers. Horse racing and stock trading were exempt, but otherwise the new law hit any “game predominantly subject to chance.” Included among such games was poker, which is increasingly played on Internet sites hosting players from all over the world.

By making the case for poker as a skill, aficionados hope to roll back the law, and even win the game newfound freedoms in states where wagering on poker is currently banned.

Poker has been on a tear for years in the U.S. and is “rampant, in a good way,” among Harvard law students, Prof. Nesson says. Poker-players-turned-celebrities vie for million-dollar purses on ESPN and the Travel Channel. Millions of Americans now play the game with some regularity. The Department of Labor last year recognized “professional poker player” as an official occupation.

No kidding…

Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who sent his regrets for the Harvard session, plays in a regular game.

Justice Scalia is probably used to people trying to read his mind and second guess his decisions.

So, the WSJ puts this story on page one to help inform the public on this growing pasttime. And since it’s on ESPN, it’s sort of a sporting thing. But the Department of Labor also designated it a professional occupation.

Poker is at heart a betting game in which players compete against one another for a growing pot of money. Players win either by getting the others to fold their cards or by having the best hand, ranked according to a hierarchy. Poker’s name most likely derives from an ancient French bluffing game called poque, from the antiquated French verb poquer, which meant “to bet.”

The luck-versus-skill debate is a lot more recent. Under U.S. common law, games that are predominantly chance are considered gambling, while those that are mainly skill are not.

In 1989, in a case enthusiasts love to cite, a California circuit-court judge ruled in favor of poker as a skill, allowing the state’s famed card rooms to stay in business. But in 2005, a North Carolina state judge smacked down a local card club, calling poker a game of chance. Case law in other states is just as mixed. Judges in Colorado, for instance, have taken both sides.

Prof. Nesson’s gathering quickly agreed that poker is clearly a game that some excel at and others don’t. “Poker is a very structured mini-version of life — and also an incredibly difficult game to get good at,” says Mr. Lederer, who took up cards at 18 and dropped out of Columbia University two years later to play full time. Both he and his sister now consult for online poker sites, and both attended the Harvard gathering.

I’d like to hear more about that “mini-version of life” philosophy.

Mastering the game, particularly the dominant version these days known as Texas Hold ‘Em, can take years. Its complexity of betting and bluffs has long exasperated computer programmers who have tried to mimic the best players.

But defining that skill is just as tough. Is it an ability to bluff? Is it largely a mathematical knack at calculating the odds of getting a certain hand, and then betting accordingly? Or is it a combination of those skills?

Anything that is capable of exasperating those computer programmers who try to rig games and make the machine smarter than the man is worth a study at Harvard, and a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal. At least in this game, the person with skill still dominates the machine. And that’s good news.