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 Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:54 am Post subject: |
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All Financial Times News (FT.com)
Black takes a gamble with 'Fast Eddie'
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner
March 29/07
| Quote: | When Judge Amy St Eve last week sustained an objection from prosecutors during the questioning of a witness by Conrad Black's defence attorney, Edward Greenspan, the veteran Canadian jurist turned to his co-counsel with a perplexed look on his face.
"You lost," Edward Genson explained to his colleague, seemingly in jest.
The joke – if, indeed, it was a joke – was an apt one. In hiring Mr Greenspan, Lord Black has taken the unusual step of depending on an attorney to defend him against criminal fraud charges who, despite being the most famous defence lawyer north of the border, is not licensed to practise in the US. As a condition of the court's decision to allow "Fast Eddie", as he is known in Canada, to serve as Lord Black's counsel, the former media executive had to agree that, if found guilty, he would not appeal the verdict on the grounds of Mr Greenspan's lack of familiarity with US law. So far, the gamble appears to have been a risky one. Mr Greenspan, 63, who went to school with Lord Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, and co-wrote a book with her ex-husband, has been seen nodding off during the trial.
Missteps in his cross-examination of Gordon Paris, who took over Hollinger International after Lord Black was forced to resign, meant a crucial line of questioning was ruled out, and jurors never heard testimony that Mr Paris had once failed to report stock holdings to securities regulators. The testimony could have raised questions about Mr Paris or, at least, shown the jury not all omissions to the SEC are criminal.
...Potentially complicating the handling of Lord Black's case, some attorneys admit, is that Mr Greenspan is sharing the spotlight with Mr Genson, 65, who is equally famous in Chicago. While the two star attorneys appear to be in sync, experts say having "two captains" can strain a defence team by offering sometimes conflicting theories of a case.
Mr Genson's strength in the courtroom lies in being able to form a theory of the case that fits the evidence, and, says Hugh Totten, a Chicago lawyer, being able to bring out his client's shortcomings, as when he spoke of Lord Black's "arrogance".
"He is a pretty good strategist, but I wonder whether Conrad has not painted him in a corner, because by the time this got to Ed Genson, Conrad Black had already . . . taken a position on the big issues," Mr Totten says. |
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 10:58 am Post subject: |
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The Professor, the Banker and
the Suicide King
Inside the Richest Game of Poker
Hardcover
By U.S. lawyer/poker blogger Michael Craig
| Quote: | I considered myself so proficient at the game by the summer of 1993 that all I needed, to my reasoning, was to step up in class, repeat my stellar low-stakes results, and begin my new life as a globe-trotting professional gambler.
Or should I say our new life? I had a wife, two children, a law partner, and a busy practice. No one was going to encourage (or allow) me to bet vast sums in the top games. I would have to prove my mettle in a poker tournament, demonstrating to all the family, friends, and colleagues who thought I had a screw loose that I was, indeed, pro poker material.
...Most important, I learned what a capricious game poker can be, and what a difficult proession it can be for even its expert practitioners. In fact, when I started, I thought the central question of the book would be why (Texas banker Andrew) Beal would attempt something so apparently foolhardy, taking on the best in the world at their game. By the end of the story, the more pertinent question is why the professionals continued to take up his challenge. By the time the stakes reached their peak, the pros were potentially risking everything on an edge they realized was virtually nonexistent.
The game went on at irregular intervals in an upstairs corner of the poker room at the Bellagio, in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, for over three years.
...reporting on a three-year series of poker games is not like reporting on three baseball seasons, or three years on Wall Street. The American obsession with numbers has pulled tournament poker into the twenty-first century. There are now tours and circuits with money rankings, player ratings, championships, and player-of-the-year awards. But the high-stakes cash games still adhere to rules reminiscent of the Old West. Rules like, "Keep you back to the wall" and "Keep your mouth shut."
There are numberous obstacles to finding out who won and who lost (and how much), some even more imposing than the beefy security personnel who magically appear if someone lingers too long on the rail of a high-stakes game. For numerous reasons, it is bad business to reveal the results of poker games. No one wants to brag lest the IRS be within earshot. (Most of these players are pretty honest when it comes to reporting poker income, evidenced by the meticulous records I saw of some of the players, the modern casino and Treasury Department rules for recording transactions of the size necessary for these players to take money out of play, and Doyle Brunson's decade-long admonition that a poker player can never accumulate wealth if he doesn't pay his taxes).
...the story is about more than dollar amounts. The willingness of the world's best poker players to risk everything is both impressive and alarming. Doyle Brunson, a legendary successful poker player and ambassador for the game, told me, "It takes kind of a sick person to play the way we do. I'm convinced we're all compulsive gamblers. We must find a way to win." Howard Lederer, also a tremendous presence in spreading a positive image of poker players, agrees. "Most of us, maybe all of us, have a little of the sickness in us...The guys that end up in the biggest games are the ones that have a little too much gamble in them, but they've managed to figure out how to use it to their advantage."
This is their story. (From the Preface at pgs. 2-11) |
There's more poker strategy in the preface of this book than we got from two years of trawling the Web. Good fun even for English majors.
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 9:34 am Post subject: |
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Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Undoing Bush
How to repair eight years of sabotage, bungling, and neglect
June, 2007
| Quote: | ...For a short parlor game, challenge your friends to name a constitutional right that Bush has not sought to undermine. After the right to bear arms and the guarantee against the quartering of soldiers, the game will be over. Those who prefer a longer game can reverse the exercise, but be prepared for an extended and dispiriting evening.
...The Fifth Amendment right to due process, meanwhile, has fallen victim to assertions that "enemy combatants" can be held indefinitely without trial, that suspicious organizations can have their assets frozen without notice or hearings, and that military tribunals can sentence defendants to death on the basis of hearsay and coerced testimony. For the administration, secrecy trumps all legal process; it has claimed that lawsuits challenging unconstitutional renditions to torture and warrantless wiretapping cannot even be adjudicated because the government's allegedly unconstitutional conduct is itself a secret, even when the facts in question have already been emblazoned across the pages of the country's newspapers.
...The first and most important step toward restoration of constitutional principle, then, will be the next election. If the public does not demand fidelity to our founding principles, our representatives will not do so on their own.
The remaining steps are straightforward. The next administration could start by proclaiming - loudly - that in wartime, as in peacetime, the American system of government includes tree branches, and the president's first job is to take care that the law is faithfully executed. Second, Guantanamo must be shut down and the prisoners there brought within our borders. When Defense Secretary Robert Graves suggested just that, the administration's lawyers objected that they would lose their argument that because the detainees are held offshore, they are unprotected by the Constitution. But the argument that Guantanamo is a "law-free zone" is precisely why that island has become a world symbol for U.S. arrogance and lawlessness - a "reverse Statue of Liberty," as some have called it. ((From 1. The Constitution by David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, at pgs. 44-45) |
| Quote: | We're no safer!
Yes, and consider worldwide crazy-making, 'anti-terror' travel woes also a legacy of this administration, at Impossible Odds. |
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| Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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12 Books That Changed The World
Hardcover
By Melvyn Bragg
| Quote: | Magna Carta, which shines so brightly still, which has guided men and women in their pursuit of the highest ideals and inspired their loyalty to ideals sometimes unto death, was born of what could be called a desperate gamble by warlords to chain down a leader who had ceased to meet their needs. It was a case of document or death. Out of the bloody battlefields of the Middle Ages came this lasting constitutional principle - that the power of a king could be and henceforth would be limited by a written grant.
It was an attempt to codify the releationships between three forces - the king, the Church and the barons. It was a deal to solve the deepening crisis of confidence in the state. One of the many ironic riches in Magna Carta is that what could be called a stitch-up by the ruling classes of the day has become an authority for democracy, a cornerstone of liberty, and the chief defence against arbitrary and unjust rule. As the authors Danziger and Gillingham point out, Magna Carta's promise of the people's liberty under the law depended on popular participation in law-making, and this in turn led to the formation of our democratic government subject to law. The law of unexpected consequences is here apparent in its fullest glory: had any one of the particpants at Runnymede in 1215 even dreamt that would happen...? (From the chapter entitled, MAGNA CARTA June 1215 by Members of the English Ruling Classes, pgs. 70-71) |
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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No guts, no glory!
Vancouver lawyers gamble on STILL another GREEN roof:
... Here's the real reason they're donating funds to UBC law faculty's bldg fund[/color]:
| Quote: | Canadian Geographic
Once-Proud Glossy Now Vancouver Real Estate Flier
Queen of green
Inspired as a girl to make the world a little
more environmentally friendly, Cornelia Hahn
Oberlander has taken her cue from nature to
become Canada's premier landscape architect
and green-roof champion.
September/October, 2007
By Sarah Scott
| Quote: | ... The three-block-long park is planted on top of an office building that stretches between Robson Street and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Designed to look like a concrete sky-scraper lying on its side, the building houses the Provincial Law Courts, a UBC satellite campus and government offices. The roof has hanging gardens, pine trees and rhododendrons, three waterwalls to block out sounds of the city, plus a rink that was once iced over for skaters but is now used by skateboarders and salsa dancers. Robson Square, as it is known, has been celebrated for the interplay between the soft contours of Oberlander's roof garden and the sharp geometric lines of architect *Arthur Erickson's construction. It is a place where lawyers and provincial bureaucrats do their daily business, but it has also become an oasis for anyone seeking an escape from the city's concrete core.
Yet today, as she drives past lines of pink dogwoods loaded with blossoms, Oberlander knows her award-winning roof garden is not altogether intact. The trees, bushes and vines were uprooted from the building in early 2006. The roof had been leaking. It leaked so badly that the entire garden had to be replaced. Oberlander and Erickson insisted that at least 40 of the 101 mature trees - mostly pines, maples and dogwoods - be rescued, while the rest were composted. When the repairs are completed in 2008, the architects will have installed a $21 million green-roof system that should not leak.
... Some people in this coastal rainforest suspect green roofs are bound to leak... (emphasis added) (-- pgs. 88-89) |
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| Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 2:48 pm Post subject: |
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Where There's a Will
Hardcover
By John Mortimer
| Quote: | It's often said that men desire women for their looks but women fancy men for some less reliable quality, like their characters or their supposed position in the world. We, the vast majority of non-beautiful people, can only hope this is true.
If it is, it puts men at an unfair advantage. If you work hard at it, you might be able to improve your character, or even your position in the world. Beauty is something you can absolutely nothing about. It is distributed in the most unfair, politically incorrect and anti-democratic manner. It is bestowed on the least deserving and often denied to the best, unselfish and kindly intentioned people. Quite often the unfair nature of this gift causes resentment, not only from jealous women. I have known beautiful girls who have been badly treated by men who feel eclipsed by such spanking looks.
I have a beautiful wife and beautiful daughters and I would never say they don't deserve such luck. The fact is mildly surprising, however, as I look, as some newspaper put it kindly, 'like a bag of spanners'. The great majority of male spanner lookalikes must work out a careful approach and avoid anything as hopeless as promising to try hard. Stendhal, no oil painting but a man who notched up his conquests on his braces, relied on laughter and boasted, perhaps truthfully, that he could beat the record of the best-looking men. There is much to be said for this approach. My experience as counsel for the defence down at the Old Bailey was that if you could get the jury laughing you were likely to win the case. The more solemn the proceedings became, the less happy the verdict was likely to be. (From Chapter 22, Missed Opportunities, at pgs. 127-128) |
| Quote: | Where There's a Will
Audio Cassette, only (so far)
Sweetly read by the author, who
learned a thing or two about
oration down the Old Bailey and
other barrister-ish environs
Mortimer's charming memoirs provide a wonderful overview of values and issues at the heart of contemporary western culture. |
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| Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack
Hardcover
By deceased Frostback literary noise,
Robertson Davies
| Quote: | To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.
Honoured Sir:
The tone of your last letter was very strong - very strong indeed. As your legal advisers, we must caution you against such layman's phrases as "take the shirt off his back" and "make him eat crow," when referring to a possible legal action. We lawyers do not like such expressions: they savour of violence.
In our opinion, your case against Richard Dandiprat is uncommonly weak. You have only circumstantial evidence that he introduced a skunk into your car. Your suggestion that we should in some way bridge the gap between guesswork and certainty alarms us by its sinister implication.
Lawyers do not like to go to court. Anything may happen in court. The magistrate may be a skunk-lover, or a card-companion of Dandiprat's, or anything. Besides, courts are invariably draughty, and our court partner, Mr. Cicero Forcemeat, is trying to postpone catching his winter cold for as long as possible. We suggested that you empower us to seek a settlement with Dandiprat out of cour. This is the proper legal way of doing business.
Yours for caution,
Mordecai Mouseman
(for Mouseman, Mouseman and Forcemeat).
(-- p. 29) |
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| Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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From The Horses:
The Second Rumpole Omnibus
Paperback
By John Mortimer
| Quote: | Rumpole's Last Case
CD Audio
Narrated by Aussie thespian Leo McKern
Aussie McKern so embraced Mortimer's star barrister that the text, audio and image become one. Rumpled baritone McKern would have been a legendary Lear. |
| Quote: | Rumpole of the Bailey
Featuring the segment,
Rumpole's Last Case
Series 4
DVD
A classic British series set mostly in the offices of a London legal firm, with occasional visits to Rumpole's 'mansion flat presided over by She Who Must Be Obeyed, and frequent forays to Pommeroy's Wine Bar, where post mortems are cheerily conducted on the events of the day in court. Turn up the volume, though. BBC had only one microphone in those days so the sound is dreadful. |
| Quote: | As I sat in the cafe I said to myself,
They may talk as they please about what they call 'pelf',
They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking,
But I cannot help it, I cannot help thinking...
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money...
So pleasant it is to heave money...
The lines went through my head as I took my usual walk down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus and then up to the Old Bailey. As I walked I could feel the comforting and unusual bulge of notes in my hip-pocket. As I marched up the back lanes to the Palais de Justice, I passed a newspaper kiosk which, I had previously noticed, seemed to mainly cater to the racing fraternity. There were a number of papers and posters showing jockeys whose memoirs were priunted and horses whose exploits were described, and I noticed that morning the advertisement for apublication entitled The Punter's Guide to the Turf which carried a story headed FOUR-HORSE WINNER FATHER OF THREE TELLS HOW HE HIT QUARTER OF A MILLION JACKPOT.
Naturally, as a successful racing man (a status I had achieved in the last ten minutes), I took a greater interest in the familiar kiosk. I had, clearly, something of a talent for the turf. The Derby one day, perhaps the Grand National the next - was it the Grand National or the Oaks? With a few winners, I thought, a fellow could live pretty high on the hog - I took a final turning and the Old Bailey hoved into view - a fellow might even be able to consider giving up the delights of slogging down the Bailey for the dubious pleasure of doing a cut-throat defence before his unpredictable Honour Judge Roger Bullingham. (From Rumpole's Last Case at p. 632) |
| Quote: | | Click on the first 360 to the right of 'THE CITY' to view a web-cam of the historic Old Bailey and environs. |
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| Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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Crash
DVD
| Quote: | Disrict Attorney: Who knows about the money?
Det. Graham Waters: You gotta be kiddin' me.
DA: There are only two people in this room.
Waters: Myself, my partner, Ferguson, Internal Affairs ...
DA: Jim Ferguson?
Waters: Yeah.
DA: OK. I guess I see the problem. As it wasn't Lewis's car, the money isn't clear evidence of any wrongdoing. And even if it was, we aren't going to prosecute a dead man. Which means the money Internal Affairs is holding can't be considered evidence.
Waters: You can do this dance if you want to, but I'm willing to bet when the coroner's report comes back tomorrow, it's going to say that Det. Lewis was coked out of his head.
DA: Fucking black people, huh? (Waters is black). |
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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A Pickpocket's Tale
The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century
New York
By Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Hardcover
| Quote: | | When larceny on streetcars grew excessive, "the riot act was read to the dips," claimed one pickpocket. Some pickpockets were "shaken down" by police, forced to pay a bribe or risk arrest. Other cops resorted to 'four-flushing" - arrest an old crook or "doormat thief," portray it as a big arrest, and ignore the more important criminals. During the 1860s well-known burglars and pickpockets like William Vosburg and Dan Noble reportedly bribed police officials in central headquarters on a weekly basis. Some police detectives were so familiar with certain pickpockets that they could identify them from a sinmple description of when and how a victim lost his or her possessions. Even when the police hauled pickpockets into court, they hired clever attorneys who fought these arrests with writs of habeas corpus. (footnotes omitted) (From The 'Guns' of Gotham, p. 66) |
| Quote: | Police court judges retained enormous power because their courts required no prosecuting officer and lacked a chief magistrate. In theory cases involving doubt, argument, or proof were remanded to the Court of General Sessions for a jury trial, a right all convicted police court defendants enjoyed. Few, however, were advised of such rights. By the 1890s, 79 per cent of all police court cases went without appeal. Since police court judges enjoyed summary jurisdiction over all disorderly conduct and other minor offenses, magistrates not only acted as both judge and jury, but as prosecuting attorneys and counsel for the prisoners. These powers convinced Mayor Abram Hewitt that police courts were "thegreat clearing house of crime, 'the Poor Man's Court of Appeals.'
Elected to uphold the law, police court judges repeatedly broke it. Some, like Maurice J. Power, openly refused to prosecute certain gambling offenses. "I am not opposed to gambling houses," he argued, "if they are conducted honestly." Numerous magistrates never bothered to learn the rules of criminal or courtroom procedures. Rare was the judge who privately met defendants with counsel to discuss the circumstances of the case, as required by law. Instead most encouraged defendants to waive the examination, which in itself was a violation.
... Those with the right political connections secured more than just bail. Indictments were often "pigeon-holed" - literally put in pigeonhole-shaped filing cases and never removed, and thus never prosecuted by the city. In 1875 District Attorney Benjamin Phelps defended the practice, insisting that disorderly house, gambling, and excise indictments were simply too numerous to bring to trial. Excise violations - "dive cases," in the vernacular of the period - enjoyed a two-year statute of limitations, encouraging bailed defendants to seek court delays and additional appeals. Even when convicted, most simply paid the fine and reopened under a new name. In 1887 former police superintendent George Walling claimed that the district attorney routinely failed to prosecute thousands of cases, which accumulated in the pigeonholes for years. (footnotes omitted) (Fom Tombs Justice, pgs. 136-138) |
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| Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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The Anti-social Behaviour of
Horace Rumpole
Hardcover
By John Mortimer
| Quote: | 'If you'd led a small Spade,' I told Leonard (Sir Leonard Bullingham, recently appointed to the High Court, Rumpole's Mad Bull Bullingham) after our game was over, 'we could have finessed their Queen. As it was, you led a Heart for no particular reason that I could see."
'Wonderful!' Leonard looked at me with admiration.
'It wasn't wonderful at all. You should have remembered that I'd bid Spades.'
'No, it's wonderful that have such an incisive mind, Hilda. And a clear memory for every card that's played. These are the sorts of talents needed for a great courtroom advocate. Pity you never considered reading for the Bar.'
Well! I didn't say any more at the time, but the thought was planted. If my mind was so incisive, why shouldn't I make a better hand at being a barrister than Rumpole, who apparently has no work in view except a small boy's footballing offences?
After we had settled the scores, and worked out that he and I had won two pounds fifty pence, the High Court judge said, 'I know you've elected to stand by Rumpole through thick and thin, Hilda. But I hope that doesn't prevent us having another occasional date. Purely platonic, of course.'
I told Leonard that I would have no objection to meeting him occasionally. I didn't care for that 'platonic' thing he mentioned. As though he flattered himself that there was a chance of it being anything else. (From Chapter 2, Extract from the Memoirs of Hilda Rumpole, pgs. 10-11) |
Books go by and still the Rumpoles continue to fascinate. We still hear Aussie Leo McKern's crackled baritone between the cherished lines.
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| Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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Uncle Dynamite
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Pongo stiffened. He did not actually say 'Ha!' but the exclamation was implicit in the keen glance which he shot across the table. His suspicions had been correct. His wife's loving sureillance having been temporarily removed, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, fifth Earl of Ickenham, was planning to be out and about again.
'You ask me,' a thoughtful Crumpet had once said in the smoking-room of the Drones Club, 'why it that at the mention of his Unlce Fred's name Pongo Twistleton blenches to the core and calls for a couple of quick ones. I will tell you. It is because this uncle is pure dynamite. Every time he is in Pongo's midst, with the sap runing strongly in his veins, he subjects the unfortunate young egg to some soul-testing experience, luring him out into the open and there, right in the public eye, proceeding to step high, wide and plentiful. For though well stricken in years the old blister becomes on these occasions as young as he feels, which seems to be about twenty-two. I don't know if you happen to know what the word "excesses" means, but those are what he invariably commits, when on the loose. Get Pongo to tell you some time about that day they had together at the dog races.'
It was a critique of which, had he heard it, Lord Ickenham would have been the first to admit the essential justice. From boyhood up his had always been a gay and happy disposition, and in the evening of his life he still retained, together with a juvenile waistline, the bright enthusiasms and the fresh, unspoiled mental outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate. He had enjoyed a number of exceedingly agreeable outings in his nephew's society in the course of the last few years, and was pleasantly conscious of having stepped on these occasions as high, wide and plentiful as a man could wish, particularly during that day at the dog races. Though there, he had always maintained, a wiser policeman would have been content with a mere reprimand.
... Pongo knocked the ash off his cigar and took a sip of brandy. There was a cold, stern look on his face.
'Now listen, Uncle Fred,' he said, and his voice was like music to the ears of the Recording Angel, who felt that this was going to be good. 'All that stuff is out.'
'Out?'
'Right out. You don't get me to go to the dog races again.'
'I did not specify the dog races. Though they provide an admirable means of studying the soul of the people.'
Or on any other frightful binge of yours. Get thou behind me, about sums it up. If you come to me in London, you will get lunch at my flat and afterwards a good book. Nothing more.'
Lord Ickenham sighed, and was silent for a space. He was musing on the curse of wealth. In the old days, when Pongo had been an impecunious young fellow reading for the Bar and attempting at intervals to get into an uncle's ribs for an occasional much-needed fiver, nobody could have been a more synpathetic companion along the primrose path. But coming into money seemed to have changed him completely. The old, old story, felt Lord Ickenham. (From Chapter 2, pgs. 22-24) |
| Quote: | Uncle Dynamite
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
Audio CD
Narrated by our favorite Wodehouse voice,
British actor Jonathan Cecil
Learn the language by studying its expressions of comedy. Of these, there can be none sunnier than the ones contained in the complete works of British humorist P.G. Wodehouse! This work represents but one example of the master in his prime. |
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| Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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Good Time Girls
of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush
Hardcover
By Lael Morgan
| Quote: | | Wickersham, whom the federal government had sent to clean up Nome after the firing of Judge Noyes, was in tune with the frontier philosophy that held both gambling and prostitution to be necessary evils. He did not believe in prosecuting gamblers, and he routinely fined prostitutes and bawdy house keepers just "a reasonable amount each quarter in vindication of the laws and as an aid to the fund to maintain the police." In fact, Nome city fathers were so protective of their demimonde that District Attorney Joseph Wood tried to corerce them by threatening to 'close down every gambling game in town and drive out every woman of ill repute" if they didn't cooperate with him and fire a certain part-time city attorney. (The testimony of that city attorney later would help send D.A. Wood to federal prison.) (footnote omitted) (-- p. 175) |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:49 am Post subject: |
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The Economist
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A big deal
Poker is getting younger, cleverer,
duller and much, much richer
Dec. 22/07
| Quote: | Parents are increasingly encouraging their children to play, he adds, because it is mentally more rewarding than video games and does not mix well with alcohol (at least if you care about winning). “When I started it was seen as a bit of an outlaw pastime, for rogues and cheats. Now it's a huge bottom-up movement,” he says.
It might seem a bit of a leap to go from here to putting poker on the curriculum. But some academics see it as a worthy subject of study. Chief among them is Charles Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School. Earlier this year he founded theGlobal Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS), whose awkward name belies a clear set of goals: to highlight poker's role in teaching patience, strategy and money management, and in improving cognitive skills. “Poker offers metaphors for a range of life skills and could be a wonderful educational tool,” says Mr Nesson, who plays a regular game with other law professors, including Alan Dershowitz—though he has yet to play with Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice known to have a fondness for poker.
Poker is, first and foremost, a game of managing resources, argues Mr Nesson, teaching a cautious approach to risk-taking, not recklessness. There is some evidence for this. One study, comparing experienced poker players with financial- market traders, found the players less likely to exhibit over-confidence.
An unlikely social-welfare tool
Determined to counter what he sees as the demonisation of poker by the American right, and the resulting squeeze on personal freedoms, Mr Nesson is working on a pilot programme to teach the game to disadvantaged children in schools in America and Jamaica. He muses about turning a property he runs in Second Life, a virtual world, into an online poker university. ...
Perhaps a better way to win over judges and lawmakers would be to highlight poker's place in the American psyche. Introduced by French colonials, as a game called poque, it soon spread from its original base in the Mississippi delta. By the late 19th century it had become a prominent cultural facet across the country, not only in the South or Wild West. Much ink has been spilled analysing its appeal to Americans. The answer may lie no deeper than Walter Matthau's one-liner about poker exemplifying “the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great”.
Poker has long fascinated America's great and good, from politicians to generals to captains of industry. Presidents Roosevelt (both), Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon were all keen players. Nixon was famously good: most of the funding for his first congressional run came from poker winnings. Poker was said to have inspired cold-war tacticians. It is still a useful military motif: recall the playing cards used to represent Saddam Hussein and his most-wanted cohorts. Poker financed a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's start-up costs. Bill Gates once said he learned more about business strategy at the baize than in classrooms - though these days he apparently prefers the more stately game of bridge.
Not all famous players have made such good role models. As he partied away the declining years of his career, Errol Flynn incurred some excruciating poker losses, including, on one particularly bad night, a Caribbean island he had hoped to develop into a holiday resort. John Wayne had some shockers too, though in one memorable game he won Lassie from the canine star's desperate owner.
Getting serious
What Nixon, Flynn and Wayne have made of poker today? They would surely have marvelled at the transformation of "the cheater's game" into a multi-billion-dollar industry, pumping out new millionaires almost daily. Even they might have been shocked at the latest season of "High Stakes Poker," a television series in which players buy into each game for $500, 000 apiece and the winner takes home more than $5m.
They might, perhaps, have been disappointed that the game had lost some of its backroom edginess. Miss Obrestad's generation are more likely to put their excess winnings into tax-free bonds than blow them betting on a single round of gold, as Mr Brunson and his Las Vegas pals used to do in their madder moments. Still, those hoping to win over poker's skeptics will find no better example than young Annette, 19. She is stern, sober and chillingly focused on her game. She appears to be exceptionally good at it too. Either that or amazingly lucky. (-- pgs. 36-38) |
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