I was looking through some of the user posts at The Unofficial World Poker Tour Fan Site when I ran across a very interesting idea: high school poker teams (props to pokadave for the idea).

The idea was presented as more or less a random idea, but I think it has a lot of potential.

For a large majority of people, poker has been and still is seen as a game of chance rather than skill. However, while chance plays a role in determing what cards you get and what cards fall on the turn and river, a large majority of success revolves around how a player plays teh game. Even with some of the worst cards, a person can out play other and win pots.

The point then is that poker, while partly a game of chance, is a much larger game of skill. Moreover, the skills necessary to make a good poker player are skills that are desirable in the job market. Math and people skills are consistently preached as two of the more basic skills necessary to function successfully in society. That is why school work foccusses on group projects and the circiculum requires so many math classes. Given schools aim at embedding these skills in our youth, it would only make sense that it would promote activities that suppliment these skills.

Poker of course, is one of those activities. To play successfully, you need to be able to calculate odds and probabilities and predict how people will act under certain circumstances and how they will respond to your decisions.

Additionally, poker teaches other life skills. Learning when to take risks, how to lose graciously, how to shrug off a big loss, and how to manage your money are all important skills that poker can help develop.

Depsite the positive aspects to poker, I'm sure there would be a substantial effort to prevent any high school poker club or team. When you look over the headlines for the last couple of months, a large majority of the articles you will find dealing with poker revolve around the possible danger poker poses to our youth. But with poker related gifts posed to become one of the top selling items this holiday season, it seems that parents have given the game the nod of approval.

At any rate, the idea of high school poker teams and tournaments just seemed like an interesting idea. How it would work out, I really am not sure. I'm interested to hear everyone's ideas. Send me an e-mail or leave a comment. Who knows, maybe some kid was ambitious enough to already have started a team/club.