SHOULD SCHOOLS OPEN DOORS TO POKER?
The first experience that many children have of Mind Sports is in a school chess club. Competing against friends can be fun, as well as educational, and can provide a welcome taste of competition to children who may not excel on the sports field. Thinking tactically and using skill to outplay an opponent can be as enjoyable as scoring goals on the football pitch.
As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, it’s a theory already expounded by one school in New York. The Henry Street High School on the Lower East side of Manhattan has been running a poker club since 2007, encouraging students to develop not only their math and psychology skills, but also to develop character, which they have gone on to use after graduation. It has delighted their school principle but also the likes of Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, who is planning to teach poker strategy alongside case law.
Of course the obstacles to poker in schools are many. While the IFP works to direct the image of poker away from the sleazy smoke-filled back rooms, towards the more intellectual (and accurate) mind sport that requires talent and skill. Poker is still in the throes of shrugging off this misconception but it’s a picture that needs to be redrawn as poker enters a new era.
Not only is poker a game that can be played by anyone, regardless of age or gender, for fun against family and friends or simply against others who share a passion for the game. More significantly money is not a pre-requisite and the chips you play with can be worth nothing other than points or simple bragging rights. Millions around the world already play like this, not for money, just for fun.
With this in mind is it so far-fetched to think poker may, like chess, be an activity high school students could engage in, finding a source of valuable life lessons, as demonstrated in Henry Street High School? It would appear the leap of faith is not such a leap after all, merely a step.