I’m pretty excited about the upcoming Gaming Research Colloquium talk that we’re hosting at UNLV:
Please join us at 12:15 PM, Thursday, Feb. 24, as February Gaming Research Fellow Darryl A. Smith delivers a Gaming Research Colloquium talk titled “’Dark with Excessive Bright:’ Gambling Tells and the Gaming Taboo.”
Smith, an assistant professor of religious studies at the Pomona College, will discuss the philosophical commonalities between poker tells and themes in religious and secular writing. Within sacred language the belief has existed that the personal name is an intrinsic part of oneself. As such, its revelation threatens exposure to powers that might undo its bearer. Smith considers the relation between the detection of tells in gambling and that of so-called true names. Strategies of concealment and detection that are basic to both tell-reading and true-naming are explored in relation to post-colonial theory’s insights into using light in order to hide things.
Those interested in poker, philosophy, religious studies, and the literature of gambling are encouraged to attend.
Admission is free and open to the public.
Gaming Research Colloquium: Professor Darryl A. Smith | University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Here’s why it’s going to be so good: Professor Smith’s background is in religious studies, so we’re getting more of a perspective on poker from the humanities than we usually do. The title, if you don’t recognize it off the bat (I didn’t), is a quote from Milton. Talking with Darryl about his research, the conversation went from John Milton to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to Mike Caro and David Sklansky, and it made perfect sense. So he’s not going to tell you how to win more pots, but he will give you a better idea of where poker draws from bigger philosophical concepts. I find that interesting.