Profs back online poker

Harvard lawyers work to overturn gaming ban

Poker players pining for a return of Internet gaming now have the law on their side. Harvard Law, that is.

A pair of top Harvard Law School professors have taken up an unlikely cause - the legalization of online poker.

Professor Charles Nesson has become an outspoken advocate on behalf of online poker, blasting last year’s crackdown, which banned online poker and other forms of Internet gaming in the United States.

Nesson has teamed up with some of his law students to form the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, which held a pair of inaugural sessions last week.

Meanwhile, Professor Alan Dershowitz is helping defend an online entrepreneur facing charges related to an offshore sports betting site with which he was involved.

Important legal principles are at stake, the two men say - though they both also admit to being avid poker fans. And they’re not alone in their interest. Harvard Law this year offered its first-ever course in gaming law.

“The idea of Internet freedom is a core notion of modern political freedom,” Nesson said.

Nesson first became interested in the game in 1981. On sabbatical, he was programming his new IBM computer, which came with a version of poker - five-card draw, jacks or better. As he tinkered with his computer, he got a close look at the bluffing algorithm and became entranced with the “elegance” of the game.

When online poker emerged years later, the Harvard professor became a fan of that too, enjoying both the challenge and the convenience. And he found himself “affronted” when poker and other forms of online gaming were banned last year in the United States after what he derides as a “midnight” vote in Congress.

Nesson contends that poker is a game of skill, not chance. Given that, poker tournaments, including online play, should be legalized, he said.

Dershowitz is also a devoted poker fan. He plays in the summer with Larry David of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fame and he jokes that he knows it’s a game of skill since he is frequently bested by better players.

Like Nesson, Dershowitz contends that, under the same “game of skill” theory, online sports betting should be legalized. It is a belief he is now putting into practice as he tries to keep out of prison an executive charged with running an online sports betting business.

“It’s certainly not a game of chance,” Dershowitz said. “It is ridiculous to call either poker or sports betting a game of chance.”

The professors contend the ban passed by Congress last year is on shaky legal ground. In fact, the tiny Caribbean island nation of Antigua, home to a number of off-shore Internet gaming companies, has already successfully challenged the online gaming ban at the World Trade Organization.

Nesson said his interest in poker extends beyond the game itself and the controversies surrounding Internet gaming.

“It’s really the poker way of thinking that is the most deeply intriguing thing to me,” Nesson said. “The essence of poker is this business of seeing from the other person’s point of view. You have to figure out just where to stop.” He believes the game of poker can be a great teaching tool by helping instill important analytical skills. “It’s so much the part of what legal thinking is about,” he said.

In fact, Nesson offers some unconventional advice to his students.

“If they want to do something useful in their outside time, they should play poker,” he said.

Boston Herald

News Added: 22 October, 2007

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