Question:Is Poker a game of skill? Poker is a game of bluff. To Bluff: To deceive (an opponent in cards) by a bold bet ...please hit "reply" to follow this thought on wiki.

yes, and here we are, almost in real time.

University Concerns About Poker

Harvard chooses the best students in the world to come here to learn. We see many of them become intensely interested in playing the game of poker. It behooves us to ask: What is to be learned from playing poker? What is to be feared? Can we mitigate the risks our fears represent?

We have an opportunity to research a magnificent digital data base opened to us for purposes of research by the online poker industry.

an open academic inquiry. We go where the questions lead. Understand that research must be unfettered, not channeled to any pre-determined result.

For example:

We will explore the place of poker in the university world, in American society, in American law, in global space, in cyberspace, following our questions where they lead.

• How great and how serious are the dangers of addiction? Are there signals of addiction which could be discerned and used to warn those at risk?
• Is Poker women-friendly? What has been the history and what is the trajectory of female participation in poker? How can the data be queried?
• Is poker competitive with the educational mission of university or to be embraced by it? What is the reality of concern about distraction of youth?
• Can measures be developed and empirical work structured relevant to the legal regulation of poker?
• Does poker differentially impact low income people?
• Is there danger of society losing its best minds to professional poker?
• Is Poker a game of skill?
• Has anyone improved on Nez Ankeny's bluffing algorithm since i wrote my poker program in 1982?

How would one query the data in order to test the question? --There are many possibilities and permutations in a statistical model. Basic MLE: dichotomous dependent variable--bluff, no bluff. Independent variables: bet size, strength of hand, gender, size of pot, siz of player's chip stack, size of opponent's chip stack, number of prior hands played, size of blink, big blind/small blind/no blind, and theoretically interesting interactions between any of the above. Interact these with income. The qualitative questions are left to inference from this and other data.

We can also request input from an interested world. I would like to learn from our students what, in their perception, they learn and risk.

we will seek in the discussion and list of invitees people who can help us structure research queries to the data. people who can help us think the problems through.

David Parks Ari Pfeffer Andy Block Annie Duke Howard Lederer Jay Kadane Steven Leavitt Andy Bloch Sen. Alfonse D'Amato Duncan Watts Justice Antonin Scalia David Sklansky Mike Sexton Andrew Woods Alan Stone Elena Kagan Theodore Stebbins Jonathan Zittrain Nick Marshall Howard Shaffer Bill Dutton put the list up on a wiki let folks add their names Michael Bolcerek, head of Poker Players Alliance

major companies in the Interactive Gaming Counsel, Party Gaming, 888, Full Tilt, Poker Stars, Micro Gaming; every card turned on their site; record the action of every player Levitt is working directly with Full Tilt, Howard Lederer; Kadane is working directly with Poker Stars, Isai Sheinberg, ceo;

April 24, 2007, form still to take shape

What do i want from you?

• a little cash up front
• a blank check going forward
• open access to your data

Make the event a fundraiser for the open domain of UNIVERSITY.

We invite the online poker industry to become an exemplar of forward thinking in understanding and supporting the quest for truth and open access to knowledge in the cyber domain. By putting poker in service of the open domain of university we will affirm an ethic of goodness and public benefit that the game itself is sometimes missing.

The Wisdom of Poker Kenny Rogers - The Gambler

poker from university our students are learners fascinated with this game we have opportunity to look at data we would be fools not to take an interest, not to see possibilities for learning ourselves what are our students so interested in learning? what are the dangers, what the cautions? questions about legality, whether poker is a game of skill questions about the differences between online and casino and social questions about openness to women questions about dangers of addiction, how much do students play like to see our students organize it

i think of poker as a game of life.

i look at it from the viewpoint of a young man fascinated with the bluffing algorithm laid out by Nez Ankeny of MIT and of an old man who sees kids all around him delighted at learning to play the game. I recommend it to my students.

As a law teacher who can use poker to teach essential skills of lawyering. As a thinker, I find profundity in the bluffing algorithm and in the liar's paradox.

poker is game of perceptive and representational skills beyond understanding odds, skills of play with the balance of power in an open field, skills of telling what's real and what's knot. When played in real life with real chips made of armies and weapons of mass destruction, poker becomes a game of life.

call for papers, call for talking points, is there a journal that would publish can we form one open access poker number one

Mark Twain: The Science vs Luck

(Written about 1867.)

At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K-----); the law was very strict against what is termed "games of chance." About a dozen of the boys were detected playing "seven up" or "old sledge" for money, and the grand jury found a true bill against them. Jim Sturgis was retained to defend them when the case came up, of course. The more he studied over the matter, and looked into the evidence, the plainer it was that he must lose a case at last--there was no getting around that painful fact. Those boys had certainly been betting money on a game of chance. Even public sympathy was roused in behalf of Sturgis. People said it was a pity to see him mar his successful career with a big prominent case like this, which must go against him.

But after several restless nights an inspired idea flashed upon Sturgis, and he sprang out of bed delighted. He thought he saw his way through. The next day he whispered around a little among his clients and a few friends, and then when the case came up in court he acknowledged the seven-up and the betting, and, as his sole defense, had the astounding effrontery to put in the plea that old sledge was not a game of chance! There was the broadest sort of a smile all over the faces of that sophisticated audience. The judge smiled with the rest. But Sturgis maintained a countenance whose earnestness was even severe. The opposite counsel tried to ridicule him out of his position, and did not succeed. The judge jested in a ponderous judicial way about the thing, but did not move him. The matter was becoming grave. The judge lost a little of his patience, and said the joke had gone far enough. Jim Sturgis said he knew of no joke in the matter--his clients could not be punished for indulging in what some people chose to consider a game of chance until it was proven that it was a game of chance. Judge and counsel said that would be an easy matter, and forthwith called Deacons Job, Peters, Burke, and Johnson, and Dominies Wirt and Miggles, to testify; and they unanimously and with strong feeling put down the legal quibble of Sturgis by pronouncing that old sledge was a game of chance.

"What do you call it now?" said the judge.

"I call it a game of science!" retorted Sturgis; "and I'll prove it, too!"

They saw his little game.

He brought in a cloud of witnesses, and produced an overwhelming mass of testimony, to show that old sledge was not a game of chance but a game of science.

Instead of being the simplest case in the world, it had somehow turned out to be an excessively knotty one. The judge scratched his head over it awhile, and said there was no way of coming to a determination, because just as many men could be brought into court who would testify on one side as could be found to testify on the other. But he said he was willing to do the fair thing by all parties, and would act upon any suggestion Mr. Sturgis would make for the solution of the difficulty.

Mr. Sturgis was on his feet in a second.

"Impanel a jury of six of each, Luck versus Science. Give them candles and a couple of decks of cards. Send them into the jury-room, and just abide by the result!"

There was no disputing the fairness of the proposition. The four deacons and the two dominies were sworn in as the "chance" jurymen, and six inveterate old seven-up professors were chosen to represent the "science" side of the issue. They retired to the jury-room.

In about two hours Deacon Peters sent into court to borrow three dollars from a friend. [Sensation.] In about two hours more Dominie Miggles sent into court to borrow a "stake" from a friend. [Sensation.] During the next three or four hours the other dominie and the other deacons sent into court for small loans. And still the packed audience waited, for it was a prodigious occasion in Bull's Corners, and one in which every father of a family was necessarily interested.

The rest of the story can be told briefly. About daylight the jury came in, and Deacon Job, the foreman, read the following:

VERDICT:

We, the jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John Wheeler et al., have carefully considered the points of the case, and tested the merits of the several theories advanced, and do hereby unanimously decide that the game commonly known as old sledge or seven-up is eminently a game of science and not of chance. In demonstration whereof it is hereby and herein stated, iterated, reiterated, set forth, and made manifest that, during the entire night, the "chance" men never won a game or turned a jack, although both feats were common and frequent to the opposition; and furthermore, in support of this our verdict, we call attention to the significant fact that the "chance" men are all busted, and the "science" men have got the money. It is the deliberate opinion of this jury, that the "chance" theory concerning seven-up is a pernicious doctrine, and calculated to inflict untold suffering and pecuniary loss upon any community that takes stock in it.

"That is the way that seven-up came to be set apart and particularized in the statute-books of Kentucky as being a game not of chance but of science, and therefore not punishable under the law," said Mr. K-----. "That verdict is of record, and holds good to this day."

-THE END-

Poker, the word, is said to derive from the German, pochen, to bluff.

Bluff: To deceive an opponent in cards by a bold bet on an inferior hand with the result that the opponent drops a winning hand; ... to deter, dissuade, or frighten by pretence or a mere show of strength; ... to cause to believe what is not true.
(Webster's Third International Dictionary)

Can we get video clips of hold'em showdowns in which a player successfully bluffs. Can we build a video database of such hands. Can we study the art to see if we can unravel the artifice, perhaps to learn a bit of it ourselves. Can we take a youtube strategy to win the case for the propriety of poker as an intelligent game people play and that our young people love and learn from. Can we show with data that this game opposes alcohol. Poker players like to win and know that alcohol interferes.

lead with image of nes ankany's book. read it as the study of a mathematician. respect the discipline.