Increase your math skills?
Once a week, a small group of students gathers in the guidance counselor's office at their Lower East Side high school for a meeting of the lofty-sounding Mathematic Operations, Psychology & Philosophy Through Tournament Card Play club.
They tend to use a more informal name: poker.
A game that conjures images of dim back rooms, rattling chips and smoky haze would seem to be an unorthodox extracurricular activity at any public school, especially a struggling one nestled beside a swath of housing projects.
Most schools offer extracurricular activities like sports and drama. But this high school in Manhattan offers something unusual: poker. Photo: Philip Montgomery
.But at the Henry Street School for International Studies, poker is a rare bright spot. The past three valedictorians have all been members of the club, which plays weekly tournaments of No-Limit Texas hold 'em. In 2008, the students traveled to Harvard University to challenge a team at the law school—and won. Later that year they were invited to represent the U.S. in a tournament at Oxford University, but they couldn't raise the funds in time.
The club's success has cheered poker fans who would like to see the game recognized as a test of skill and strategy, much like chess. The United States Poker Federation is trying to strip the game of its seedier associations and reposition it as one of the world's official "mind sports."
"Poker has been lumped in with some nefarious behavior because of the way it's been played. But if you take money out of it and look at it on a skill level, what makes somebody a good poker player we think can translate to other areas of cognitive learning," said Amy Handelsman, executive director of the federation and the United States Mind Sports Association.
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ClosePhilip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal
Maurice Engler was a guidance counselor at the Henry Street School.
.It is a vision embraced by the club's founder, Maurice Engler, a former guidance counselor at the school who said he dreams of creating a network of poker teams across the city to akin to what's in place for chess. But he knows the deck is stacked against him.
After Mr. Engler left the Henry Street School last year, he tried to start a club at his new place of work, another high school in Manhattan. The principal shut down the club midyear, he said.
"He tried it and just could not get behind it," Mr. Engler said.
The Henry Street team, which currently has eight to 10 members, is the only sanctioned high school poker club in the city, he said.
Mr. Engler started the club in 2007 after realizing that poker was an effective way to reach some children, as well as a novel approach to math and psychology.
He started meeting with students every week with a few firm rules: No cursing. No money exchanged. No innuendo.
He began each session with a mini-tutorial on probability, the dangers of gambling or Zen philosophy, which the students quickly dubbed the "hippie lessons." After Mr. Engler left, the club continued.
Malachi Riddick, now 18 years old, began playing poker with Mr. Engler in middle school as a way to overcome shyness during their counseling sessions, he recalled.
Although he was a founding member of the club, he spent a year on "tilt"—thrown off his game by the teasing of other players, he said. At one point, he even considered quitting. But instead, he schooled himself in self-control.
"Poker is learning experience—you win some, you lose some," he said.
At the Harvard competition, he finished second in the tournament to a teammate, beating every law school player. Although Mr. Riddick graduated last year, he said he still carries the club's lessons with him.
"Every decision I make, as simple as, you know, if I stay out too late, if I want to argue with my mom, I think, 'Is this the right thing to do?'" said Mr. Riddick, who is working this year and applying to college. "Just like with cards: 'Is this the right bet? What are the chances of that happening?' It's deeper than just the cards."
Still, anti-gambling groups warn that the risks of such clubs might outweigh the benefits.
"I think for the vast majority of kids it can be very good education and these are great skills to teach but it comes at a cost," said Keith Whyte, the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling.
He noted that 4% to 6% of children become addicted to gambling, and that it has been linked with other high-risk behaviors, including drug use.
"You need to be very careful when you're potentially triggering that pleasure/reward addictive pathway," he said. "We're not saying it should be prohibited. But we're saying there must be comprehensive responsible gaming and problem gambling education if you're using it as a teaching tool."
Erin McMahon, the principal at the Henry Street School, said she initially shared similar concerns. Last year 88% of students there qualified for free lunch, and the high school received a C on its most recent report card, according to Department of Education data.
But her doubts were dispelled after visiting the club one afternoon, she said.
"You walked into this and you felt the level of intensity and focus I hadn't seen anywhere in my building before that," she said. "I said, 'There's something going right there.'"
The Harvard trip confirmed her instincts, she said.
"You want to raise the bar so that kids have a new understanding of what's possible, and I think this experience has raised that bar," she said. "The risk has been worth the reward."
The game has earned some high-profile supporters. Charles Nesson, the Harvard Law School professor who led the team that lost to the Henry Street School students, has become a leading proponent for poker in the classroom.
He is now a board member of the United States Poker Federation and is planning to teach a class next year that incorporates poker training alongside case law.
"Poker's all about who your adversary is and how much of your credibility you risk," he said. "The metaphors of poker are vibrant in the context of legal adversarial action."
Students said it helped in daily life, too, enabling them to read people by detecting the slight hesitation or rapid blinking that signals a bluff. It has steadied their emotions, leaving them less susceptible to outside pressures. And for some, it introduced a new respect for a subject they had dismissed: math.
"I never really liked math but that's the thing that impressed me: Poker has a lot to with math," said senior Nateam Karim, the lone female member of the club. "Poker has taught me that math is actually very useful."
The 17-year-old said she plans to enroll in CUNY next year and major in psychology, an interest she also credits to poker.
After watching her teammates bluff, fold and occasionally fume, she said, "I wanted to understand how the human brain works and why people do certain things."
Write to Sophia Hollander at sophia.hollander@wsj.com
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