The card game that is a game of skill to its advocates, and a potentially ruinous bet on chance to its detractors, is to be taught to disadvantaged US schoolchildren and college students to teach respect, business acumen and even war strategy.

Professor Charles Nesson will unveil a plan to set up 'global poker strategic thinking societies' at universities around the world, including Harvard, Yale and Oxford, when he attends a conference on virtual worlds and cyberspace in Singapore, which starts today.

The societies will set up poker workshops at schools, sponsor university poker matches and develop an online poker curriculum for institutions.

Prof Nesson, who once sold a computer program he devised based on five-card draw, jacks-orbetter - a variation of poker - for US$50,000 (S$76,000), said workshops had been arranged as an after-school activity for disadvantaged children in the Boston area and in Jamaica that involved real money, albeit very small stakes.

'Poker teaches people to think for themselves, it is a key component of individuality and a prime aspect of managing resources,' Prof Nesson said.

Businessmen could learn from poker the art of avoiding making the first offer, he added, while teenagers could pick up life skills such as patience, composure and respect for their foes.

He added that there was no better tool than poker to teach people how to make the most of their limited chips and 'how to lose' or 'to lose well'.

'As far as I'm concerned, it would be a better world if we all played poker,' Prof Nesson said. Financial Times