| How to Gamble If You Must
A one unit freshman course "How to Gamble If You Must," dealing with
poker and other card games was first offered in the fall of 2005 at the
University of Georgia.
Faculty at the university is encouraged to get creative by taking
courses on Bob Dylan, Chocolate Science, and the History of Major League
Baseball.
The premise of the course: if you're going to play, play right. It drew
13 men and two women and featured stud poker and Texas Hold 'em games
with a Hold 'em tournament at the end of the class. The tournament
winner was excused from having to do a required written paper. The
students were typical freshman, 18 and 19 years old with poker
experience, mostly from home and dorm games. The class consisted of
lectures and practice. "After bringing up some of the probabilities, I
would say, 'Let's just play and see what's going on,'" Dr. Seymour says.
According to Lynne, "They found stud to be harder than Hold 'em. They
were surprised to learn that the probability of having a pair in the
first five cards is slightly less than 50% and slightly more than 50% to
have a hand full of nothing," she reports.
Lynne has a Ph. D. in statistics from the University of North Carolina
in Chapel Hill. In 2004 she had a visiting professorship gig in the
Netherlands. She has presented scientific papers in Italy and France and
is Associate Editor of the Journal of Statistical Computation and
Simulation.
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