Poker Teaches

Google Tech Talks November, 29 2007 Want to learn about how Texas Hold'Em can be more than just a game? Come hear Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson and Harvard Law student Andrew Woods talk about the ways that poker can be used as a powerful tool for teaching core negotiation and business skills. Professor Nesson is the founder of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS), an organization focused on developing an academic curriculum using poker as a teaching tool. Professor Nesson and Mr. Woods believe that poker can be used to teach important life skills such as game theory, strategic thinking, risk assessment, and money management in an engaging and interactive way. Speaker: Prof. Charles Nesson Charles Nesson was born in 1939. He is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (a research center which focuses on the legal study of cyberspace) and of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. He is author of Evidence, with Murray and Green, and has participated in several cases before the Supreme Court, including Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. In 1971, Nesson defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. He was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the case against W.R. Grace that was made into the film A Civil Action. Nesson attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, and then Harvard Law School where he joined the list of only a handful of people in history to have graduated summa cum laude. Nesson was a law clerk to Justice John Marshall Harlan II on the US Supreme Court, 1965 term. He then worked as a special assistant in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. His first case, White v. Crook, made race and gender-based jury selection in Alabama unconstitutional. Nesson joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1966, and was tenured in 1969.