Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society

Never have I felt more proud that I am a poker player than today. A few days ago I was meeting the cool people from iCommons (Elizabeth and Kevin) to talk about the performance and DJing of Creative Commons music by Gratisvibes for Flash Forward. They are nice people, and so are the bunch of people I met at the event.

The DJ-ing at Flash Forward went really well and I was really proud of them, Adrian (Gratisvibes), Ikram (Gratisvibes), Chen Tao (EML) and Jeff (EML). None of them have DJ-ed for any events at all, we are all simply composers and producers of electronic music. I didn’t DJ that night because I was really busy the few days before, couldn’t find time to practise.

During the discussion with Elizabeth and Kevin for the event preparation, I asked them about Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, which I’ve heard quite a bit about while following poker news and which I saw its logo on the promotional poster of Flash Forward. They introduced me to Prof. Charles Nesson (the creator of the society) and some other people who are directly involved with GPSTS and got me into a play money game which coincidentally they were also playing at that moment. Played a few hands with them and managed to won quite a lot of play money chips (they’re candy!) but most importantly, I got to meet the people behind the society which I really support.

Today, they were holding a workshop at State of Play V and I went as promised to help them a little in conducting the workshop. Prof. Nesson got me to deal for a table and also told me to stop the game whenever there were major decisions to get the players to discuss about the actions. The players were mostly first time learners to the game. After the workshop and discussion session, I can see that a lot of them not merely enjoyed playing the game, most, if not all of them agreed that poker is game of skills and the countless of lessons one can learn from a simple game of poker. With many of the participants being lawyers, I felt like I was in a particular scene from the movie Rounders, the only movie which I have watched for more than 10 times and am still loving it, where Mike McDermott was showing his law professors how he could intelligently spell out what the opponents in the game has.

I have been playing poker for 3 years now, and am still actively playing it, or rather breathing it. Due to the involvement of money and luck in the game, a lot of people mistakenly think that poker is in the same league as roulette, blackjack or craps, which all are forms of gambling with no skills needed. Poker is a simple game to learn, yet takes a lifetime to master. Poker combines elements of mathematics, statistics, psychology, people skills, negotiation skills, risk evaluation skills, luck, etc.

I support what GPSTS is doing and I hope that one day, people will not only see the game differently, but will also be more willingly to pick up the game, teach it to the students and their children for the countless of lessons that the game could bring.