Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS)

The public hearing at the State House on the Massachusetts Casino Expansion bill was packed — standing room only — but GPSTS founder and president Charlie Nesson stayed around until 9:30 PM to speak out in opposition to the bill, which will criminalize online poker playing if passed.

Nesson was also party to an interesting exchange with Deval Patrick, who was first to testify at the hearing.

You can read his testimony below.

Hi. I’m Charlie Nesson, law professor at Harvard. founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. We are a leading center of thought on the highest and best uses of internet technology. I am also founder and president of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, gpsts.org.

Buried in Governor Patrick’s resort casino bill is a provision making criminals of those who play poker online, threatening two years in prison and $25,000 fine. To some it may seem trivial in light of the jobs and money issues at stake here to be concerned about making thousands of Massachusetts residents criminals.

I ask you to take just a few minutes here to focus on it. A larger issue of good government is at stake. I have been trying unsuccessfully for months to determine who put this criminalization provision into the bill. As of this morning I now finally have it from the Governor himself that this criminalization provision was inserted in the bill at the behest of the Attorney General, Martha Coakley, and – this is news! — the Governor will not now stand behind it.

Is Martha Coakley behind this criminalization provision? Will she come forward and discuss the wanton damage her provision would impose?

I believe education will prove to be the internet’s highest and best use. I speak for the potential use in online education of learning and teaching through mastery of strategic games, from tic tac toe through checkers and chess to poker with lessons along the way about logic and life. Instead of criminalizing online poker, I ask the legislature to recognize poker as among the most sophisticated of strategic games, and to acknowledge its potential power as a teaching tool, and to open to the possibility of embracing online poker with facilitating regulation. This could bring to Massachusetts a multi-billion dollar industry and significant revenue for the state.

The Governor’s bill as it stands is fatally defective, any way you look at it, whether from the standpoint of poker players, or from a good government perspective, or from the viewpoint of those of us who would like to see Massachusetts become a leader in online education and a home for internet communities.