SOURCE: www.bostonherald.com

Poker players pining for a return of Internet gaming now have the law on their side. Harvard Law, that is.

A pair of top Harvard Law School professors have taken up an unlikely cause - the legalization of online poker.

Professor Charles Nesson has become an outspoken advocate on behalf of online poker, blasting last year’s crackdown, which banned online poker and other forms of Internet gaming in the United States.

Nesson has teamed up with some of his law students to form the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, which held a pair of inaugural sessions last week.

Meanwhile, Professor Alan Dershowitz is helping defend an online entrepreneur facing charges related to an offshore sports betting site with which he was involved.

Important legal principles are at stake, the two men say - though they both also admit to being avid poker fans. And they’re not alone in their interest. Harvard Law this year offered its first-ever course in gaming law.

“The idea of Internet freedom is a core notion of modern political freedom,” Nesson said.

Nesson first became interested in the game in 1981. On sabbatical, he was programming his new IBM computer, which came with a version of poker - five-card draw, jacks or better. As he tinkered with his computer, he got a close look at the bluffing algorithm and became entranced with the “elegance” of the game.

When online poker emerged years later, the Harvard professor became a fan of that too, enjoying both the challenge and the convenience. And he found himself “affronted” when poker and other forms of online gaming were banned last year in the United States after what he derides as a “midnight” vote in Congress.