Prof Pushes for Gambling Bill

Professors and students at the Law School are placing their bets on the legal legitimacy of online poker.

Weld Professor of Law Charles R. Nesson ’60, the founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, is exploring the possibility of a bill that will remove congressional limitations on online gaming.

In 2006, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, barring U.S. banks from transferring money to online gaming companies. But this April, Rep. Barney Frank ’61 (D-Mass.) introduced a bill that would legalize the $13 billion Internet gambling industry and bring it under the jurisdiction of the federal government. On Monday, Nesson, a specialist in cyberlaw, attended a meeting with Frank in Washington to discuss the measure.

“I’m in support of [the bill], but I’m dubious about its likelihood of passage,” Nesson, who is an online poker player himself, said in an interview. “I...much more strongly support an initiative that would recognize the legality of tournament poker.”

Nesson said he is studying what introducing such a more limited bill would involve.

Nesson’s defense of tournament poker is grounded in the idea that the game is based on skill and strategy, like a golf tournament.

“You win according to how you finish in the competition,” he said. “That just has no connection in a solid way with what people see as problem gambling.”

Since founding the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, an organization at Harvard Law School and elsewhere that promotes poker as a test of skill, Nesson has worked to introduce the game to academia. The society has held multiple discussion panels at Harvard concerning poker’s legality on the national and world stage. The group also plans to introduce a poker-based curriculum into a school in Dorchester, according to Nesson, who hopes that it will be viewed as a “positive, educational game.”

“If the public at large came to see poker as positive, that would then find expression in the law,” Nesson said.

Andrew M. Wood, the executive director of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, also argued that poker should be taught to youth. “It’s a fantastic way to spend your time,” Wood, a third-year student at the Law School, said. “Much better than World of Warcraft.”