USC Takes on UCLA in GPSTS Team Poker

Following Harvard-Yale Showdown, Second Inter-school Poker Match Sets theStage for National March Madness EventBOSTON. The Global Poker Strategic ThinkingSociety (GPSTS) will continue its schedule of inter-school matches thisweekend with a team poker competition between USC and UCLA as part of the runup to a national inter-school poker tournament in March 2008.

The USC-UCLA match will take place on Friday, November 30, at 1 pm, on theUCLA campus in Los Angeles and will coincide with the weekend's annualfootball game between the two southern California rival schools on Saturday.Annie Duke, one of the top female poker players in world, will speak on thePsychology of Poker and Gender Roles in Poker at 12 pm prior to the match.

Team Poker is a competitive and fun spin on Texas Hold'em, in which fiveplayers from each team play their counterparts from the opposing school inseparate one-on-one, best-of-three matches. Players receive seeded rankings 1-5 prior to the match and play their counterpart seed from the opposing school.Individual players start each set with 2000 chips and play until one playerhas all of the chips. Once he has won two of three sets, the winner of thematch receives one point for his team, and the team accumulating three pointsfirst wins the whole best-of-five tournament.

This ongoing series began in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 16, in amatch between rivals Harvard and Yale, which coincided with the annualHarvard-Yale football game that weekend. Harvard took home the trophy, bestingthe Yale poker squad by 3 games to 2.

GPSTS plans to hold several inter-school poker matches leading up to thelaunch of a National Collegiate Poker Tournament in March. GPSTS ExecutiveDirector and third year Harvard Law School student Andrew Woods said, "There'stremendous enthusiasm on campus for GPSTS and for poker matches. We hope tocapture the same spirit of the March Madness basketball tournament when wehold our national competition in the spring."

GPSTS believes that poker teaches and sharpens important life skills,making poker more than merely a fun game. GPSTS is dedicated to formingchapters on college and university campuses that share the poker strategicthinking philosophy, staging strategic poker matches between chapters andschools, hosting conferences and seminars that explore the strategic thinkinginherent in poker, and exploring new ways to use poker as an educational toolthat teaches life skills.

Since GPSTS' August 2007 launch at the State of Play international gamingconference in Singapore, GPSTS has organized student poker societies atseveral major universities, held workshops, and presented a series of academicconferences, lectures, and seminars. Past participants in GPSTS seminars haveincluded poker celebrities Jim McManus, and World Champion Mike Sexton.

More information on the tournament series can be found at www.gpsts.org.
Founded by Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, the Global PokerStrategic Thinking Society views pokers as a game of skill that can be used asa teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education. Theconcept is to use poker to teach basic life skills, strategic thinking,geopolitical analysis, risk assessment, and money management. The goal is tocreate an open online curriculum centered on poker that will draw thebrightest minds together, both within and outside of the conventionaluniversity setting, to promote open education and Internet democracy.

News Added: 29 November, 2007

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