Harvard Law School's new student-led Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) and a leading Harvard professor have scheduled a series of lectures and conferences to examine the role of poker in the law and education.

The lectures, open to the media and to take place at 5 p.m. in Room 102 of Hauser Hall on the law school campus at 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, will begin on Monday (October 15) and continue for the remainder of the Fall Semester. They are being sponsored by Harvard's Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, which is organizing student poker societies on university campuses nationwide, and Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, who is focusing on the study of poker as an academic exercise.

The lecture series began on Oct. 9 with an examination of a Department of Justice policy to prosecute companies in the online gaming industry, which operates legally in most of the world except in the U.S. The lecture featured a debate between criminal defense lawyer Harvey Silvergate, trial and appellate lawyer Matt Feinberg, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Law Alex Whiting. The lecture was titled The Principle of Law and Prosecutorial Abuse of IT and examined prosecutorial power in eliciting guilty pleas.

In explaining the lecture series, Professor Nesson said: "The conflict between the U.S. government and the growing online gambling industry is a timely issue for law students interested in the impact of international treaties on domestic U.S. law, and Internet freedom and regulation."

"I am excited that this lecture series will examine the complex legal and ethical issues relating to online gambling and poker, and will extend the Harvard Law classroom beyond the conventional setting via the Internet and Second Life," added Nesson, who founded the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) and who has been a tenured faculty member at Harvard for more than three decades.

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