Poker can improve your decision making: Deepak Dhayanithy

Mention poker and most will think gambling, casinos. But there’s Deepak Dhayanithy, assistant professor at Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode who teaches poker as a tool in strategic management. Gargi Gupta met up with him at the recently concluded Poker Sports League in Goa for a brief chat.

How did the course on poker come about and how long have you been teaching it?

The course was developed in 2013-14, and it is being offered as an elective in the second year of MBA for the past four years. It started with a batch of about 60 students and now there are 180.

What relevance does poker have to business?

Poker is a terrific decision-making challenge. And the decision is about gaining money and chips - if I have so many chips now should I put it at risk or wait for others to bust out so that I can get the money. A lot of those thought processes have historically been relevant for business. To be good at poker, or business, you have to be good at decision making under uncertainties where some things you know, some things you don’t and must figure out from what everybody else is doing. These are common underlying skills in psychology, probability, numbers, and signaling, that can help understand whether they are deceiving or attempting to deceive through their actions.

Are there other universities where poker is taught?

Poker is used as a pedagogical tool in a lot of universities around the world, to teach everything from probability to game theory to law. In Harvard Law School, there is a society that uses poker to think strategically. In MIT, there are courses on poker. These have been around since at least the 2000s. In his book Misbehaving, Richard Thaler, who won the economics Nobel recently, tries to explain a concept called ‘mental accounting’ through the experience of a poker game he and his professor friends used to play. There is a Michael Lewis book ‘Liar’s Poker’ which is largely about the subprime crisis.

Do you play poker?

I am a poker fan. I did play a bit but not now. I just don’t have a good enough game to succeed at the highest levels. But to be able to teach you need to play well enough to earn the students’ respect. I need to be able to play hands with them and tell them this is why I did this.

So is playing part of classroom activity?

Also. We have theory classes and also a workshop mode in which we play and review what happened and why we did what we did, trying to connect it to theory. Students write something called poker diaries and present it in class. I know that they play in their dorms and so on. The objective is not to make poker champions of the students, but to improve their decision-making with poker.

Has anyone become an addict?

Like any competitive activity, poker has that risk of recklessness as well. In the course, we discuss behavioral risks associated with poker. We have a course peer review process at IIM Kozhikode which has helped shape and strengthen the course. Questions helped incorporate responsible poker playing in the course, and simultaneously clarify decision-making skill aspects.