Why elementary schools should teach poker | Liv Boeree | Big Think

Why elementary schools should teach poker

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Champion poker player Liv Boeree isn't suggesting that children become professional gamblers who play for high stakes, like she often does. But she is suggesting that if more children learned poker, they might be more ready for the real world. For instance, what is a poker hand other than a progressive set of decisions with consequences, sort of like adult life itself? Liv posits that children would learn that their actions have consequences and the benefits of updating your beliefs, both of which are very important developmental skills (and ones that even some adults have yet to master). You can find out more about Liv at www.livboeree.com.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LIV BOEREE:

Olivia "Liv" Boeree is a poker player, TV presenter and model from England who won the 2010 European Poker Tour in Sanremo. Born in Kent, Boeree studied at Ashford School before going on to earn a First Class Honours degree in Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. She was the #1 ranked female player on the Global Poker Index as of November 2015, and #6 on the female all-time live poker winnings list.

Boeree was a keen guitar player in her early twenties, specializing in the heavy metal genre. In University she played lead guitar in the band Dissonance, and in 2006 she briefly featured as lead guitarist for rock/goth band Nemhain before starting her career in poker.

Boeree also modeled in her early twenties for rock and alternative lifestyle features.

Boeree was introduced to the poker industry when she was selected as one of five contestants for the reality TV show Ultimatepoker.com Showdown, which aired on Five in Autumn 2005.

After the show, Boeree began playing poker regularly at the Gutshot Club in London, and from there became an on-screen reporter for Gutshot TV at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Soon after she became the host of Challenge TV's on-line coverage of the European Poker Tour, also appearing as a reporter for the World Series of Poker Europe on WorldSeriesofPoker.com.

On 21 April 2010, Boeree won the European Poker Tour main event in San Remo, at the time the largest ever poker tournament held on European soil. Boeree won €1,250,000 and thereby became the third woman ever to win an EPT title.

She has shown continuous success on the EPT circuit with twelve Main Event cashes to date. Other notable results include a 2nd place in the 2014 UKIPT Edinburgh Main Event a 3rd place in the EPT Barcelona High Roller event for €391,000 in August 2015.

Boeree has been a member of Team PokerStars Pro since September 2010. Her total live tournament winnings exceed $3,000,000.

In February 2016 she was announced as the Team Manager of the Global Poker League team "The London Royals".

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Liv Boeree: Do I think we should teach poker in elementary schools? Yes, I think there are elements of the game that you should teach in terms of like—because what poker really does is teach you how to deal with probabilities and uncertainties, and that's so integral to life.

Everything we try to do—“should we take this route or that route”, “should I go here on vacation or there”—it's all about dealing with uncertainties and probabilities of things happening, and poker is a very fun and easy way to teach someone how to do that.

It's a shame people often put poker in the same ballpark as just general gambling. Just because some people choose to play it for money, but you don't have to play for money—it's just about winning. You could win anything. You could win pride. You could win matchsticks or money.

And there is so many like core fundamentals of the game that I wish I had known at age ten, these ides, these sort of ways of thinking about expected value and probabilistic thinking in general would have sped up a lot of things in my life had I been more aware of it.

And also learning how to evaluate evidence; that's something that is not taught in school or very rarely taught in school, learning how to change our minds, update our beliefs. When we get new information being able to weigh is that information reliable or not and playing poker has taught me how to do those much more accurately.

So, if there's a way to teach children through a game, and children love to learn through games, poker could be one of those methods.

I think being mathematically minded is—there's probably some a...

For the full transcript, check out