MIT Now Offers Poker Major

“I was going to college just to get the hell out of my house so I could play online poker 18 hours a day,” said Mike Chung, a poker major who is simultaneously playing three hands of Texas Holdem on three different monitors in his MIT campus dorm room. “When I heard MIT offered poker as a major, I was like ‘Hey Cal Tech, you and your Aerospace scholarship can suck it, I’m hitting the East Coast to make some mad money!”

Chung, who scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs, and other brilliant young minds like him have traded in their 9-to-5 engineering job aspirations and have immersed themselves in the popular card game. With televised tournaments propelling amateurs to the top of the sport and online betting only a laptop and parent’s credit card away, mega-brain students have put fresh air, socializing and general hygiene on the back burner to master this resurgent pastime and begin an exciting new career.

“This is awesome! I just switched majors from cancer research to poker,” said a very confident sophomore Randy “Nut Flush” Wertz. “I would usually miss about half of my classes and still ace every exam, but now if I miss a class, I might miss some crucial tips on how to avoid a bad beat from guest lecturers like Phil Gordon, Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey and that old celebrity chick with the huge rack.”

“Just this morning, in my Advanced Raising class, I had 5/5 and was heads-up against an Ace-King off suit. I was thinking the AK must be slightly ahead if 8/9 is ahead versus the 3/3. But I was wrong, my 5/5 was ahead, but only slightly as a 55% favorite. Man,I should have known that!”

“Times change and we try to keep up,” said the dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Garvin Werner. “We’re in tune enough to know the majority of our kids are playing poker online or with friends about 80% of the time, so why not help them instead of pretending it’s not happening? We’re really proud of this new major. Our school bookstore now has a large section devoted to poker videos and gaming gear. It’s very popular.” Werner added with a grin as he tipped his black “Shut Up and Deal” cap.

“We set up our own mini-casinos on campus,” Werner continued. “Due to the rapid expansion of the Poker Department, we pared back less popular majors and have converted a couple rooms once used for artificial heart research and robotics. Our casinos are very realistic. We pump in stale air, offer an outrageously bland buffet and make the students bet with their own money so they can appreciate the real highs and lows of big stakes poker,” Werner added as he motioned to a pair of ATM machines in the front of the room.

Asked if he or the faculty had a problem taking students’ betting money in addition to their tuition, Werner replied, “It’s nice added revenue for the school, and it’s not like our men’s basketball team is bringing in a hundred grand a month for us.”

We pump in stale air, offer an outrageously bland buffet and make the students bet with their own money so they can appreciate the real highs and lows of big stakes poker…

“We do use the some of earnings to enhance the program. This past semester, we hired a staff of cocktail waitresses trained to feed the students drinks at a rapid pace and other work-study students hover around the tables in sweat suits, chain smoke and offer unwanted advice. Again, this helps the student deal with real-world situations.”

“I’m up a few hundred dollars this month,” said a visibly tired Wertz with large bags under his eyes as he constantly flipped a chip between his fingers. “But I’m no fish, there are a bunch of donkeys in my class who are a good 5 to 10 grand in the hole, always playing their beer hands instead of dumping them. Freaking mushes!” Wertz then finished his thought and quickly dashed off to sell some blood plasma to help further fund his education.

In addition to standard poker classes like Gambling Theory, Bluffing and Semi-Bluffing, Psychology of The Trap, Recognizing Tells, Mastering Percentages, Trash Talk and How to Dress Like a Degenerate, the curriculum includes the classics: Card Counting, Slight of Hand, Grifting, False Cutting and Peek Like a Pro. And while poker is basically a single-player game, the school offers courses like Tournament Play Collusion, Group Scams and Let’s Bring Down The Casino to help students bond and work as a group. “We teach these skills so the students can recognize them of course, not actually use them,” explained Werner. “We strive to uphold the game’s honorable tradition.”

A few courses in first aid, wound stitching and how to take a punch are also encouraged as electives for those unfortunate times when the pit bosses confuses you for a cheater and take you to a private meeting with casino security.

Jeff Lyons
Education Reporter

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