I know poker players sometimes forget there’s a whole non-poker world out there, but really there is … and one of the big stories in the big media these days is the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for US Supreme Court.
Turns out Kagan is known amongst her posse as something of a poker player. The only contemporary Kagan I could find in the Hendon Mob any player database is Matthew Kagan, from Cambridge, MA, who min-cashed in the 2005 WSOP main event. Definitely not her, but who knows, she’s got strong Harvard ties, maybe related … ?
Amongst the non-ideological superlatives: ABC’s Diane Sawyer trumpeted the “historic nomination†of the “five foot three inch powerhouse,†CBS’s Crawford insisted “her interests reflect her openness. She loves softball and poker†(poker reflects “opennessâ€?) and NBC’s Pete Williams hailed her as an “accomplished poker player, opera lover.â€
Kagan also plays poker and drinks beer, according to Litman, who described her as “someone who from early on has focused on the law’s impact on people’s lives.”
Face the Ace: Whether he’s abusively litigious or not is up for debate, but the Hollywood lawyer challenging Full Tilt (right) is apparently no legal schlep.
Just looking into the lawyer pressing the RICO Bot-suit against Full Tilt … Cyrus Sanai … from the best I can tell, he’s quite the loose-aggressive legal player … perhaps a self-appointed Gus Hansen of the courtroom?
Back in the day he wrote for Slate.com, about issues such as assisted suicide and school violence … and seemed to dig the journalism thing during his days at Harvard. (That’s where he went for undergrad. Law School at UCLA.)
His most recent case of note came last year, when he engaged in an ongoing battle against an LA judge … where Sanai found the judge’s personal blog, complete with humorous/bizarre porn images, and outed his NSFW fetish proclivities while was adjudicating a big obscenity case against a pornographer:
The question is how someone who has frequently engaged in frivolous litigation still remains a member of the California bar without any disciplinary record. It will be appalling if Kozinski faces judicial discipline in this dispute before Sanai faces attorney discipline.
More on what the LA legal community has to say about him below:
This week I come to you from Holland! Topics include the European Union, as they prove you don’t have to be an American to be a hypocrite! Plus, Harvard Medical takes a look at online gambling addiction.
Andy Bloch caught an ace on the river to best Huck Seed … so he moves on to what is theoretically his second-biggest heads-up match of his career (the first being the 2006 $50k HORSE finals against Chip Reese) vs. his longtime poker pal and Full Tilt cronie Chris Ferguson.
This matchup is also an East Coast vs. West Coast thing … pitting Dr. Ferguson’s game-theory upbringing and Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA against Bloch’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT and JD from Harvard Law … so let’s hope no one gets shot.
Law professor Charles Nesson and his students have formed a group at Harvard University to use poker to teach life skills and examine important issues like the WTO v. US conflict. The Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) started off their lecture series this week with a panel featuring Crandell Addington and Howard Lederer.
Nesson explained about the group:
The Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society views poker as an exceptional game of skill that can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education. We use poker to teach strategic thinking, geopolitical analysis, risk assessment and money management. We see poker as a metaphor for skills of life, business, politics and international relations. Our goal is to create an open online curriculum centered on poker that will draw the brightest minds together, both from within and outside of the conventional university setting, to promote open education and Internet democracy.
Founded by Harvard Law Professor and Berkman Center founder Charles Nesson, GPSTS has three programmatic goals: offering poker strategic thinking workshops to schools and community centers, particularly in underprivileged neighborhoods; sponsoring team poker matches between law, business and other professional schools; and conducting seminars, panel discussions and conferences that explore poker as a means to teach strategic thinking and related public policy issues.
The poker matches that are part of the GPSTS schedule will take place in November, first pitting Harvard v. Yale, then taking it to the West Coast for a UCLA v. USC showdown.
Harvard folks obviously see the importance of poker in society. Can the U.S. government possibly show up for class and take some notes?
