While some might call gambling a vice, poker is actually a game of skill, patience, and gut instinct (if you're good at least). In fact, some of the best in the game are seeing it as an exercise in leveraging some valuable lessons on human behavior. To sweeten the pot, they're out to turn the grand prize into something more than cash--a chance to use game theory for a whole lot of good.

The World Series of Good is a project designed to steal a bit of the biggest poker pot in the world: The World Series of Poker. At $10,000 a head for entry, the tournament paid out $8.5 million to the winner and more than $175 million overall last year. Backed by some serious poker all-stars (including Annie Duke, Phil Gordon, and Rafe Furst of Full Tilt Poker fame), the goal of the WSOG is simple: Send one upstart card shark in to go for the gold and donate all his/her winnings to great causes... and rally a media blitz along the way, to convince as many of the tournament finalists as possible to donate 1% of their winnings to the charities of their choice.

WSOG project founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn (pictured above) crowdsourced this year's $10,000 entrance fee on Kickstarter and made quite the intended splash along the way.

Michael himself made it to the third day of the official WSOP tournament, which took place earlier this month in Las Vegas, beating out over 25% of the field. He folded eventually, but the movement raised over $150K for some amazing charities, garnered the support and participation of some of the biggest poker studs out there, and, in a true Character Approved move, offered a few surprises along the way--check out the video of the gang dressed in women's jumpsuits which got quite the attention of ESPN and others for Bad Beat on Cancer here. All told, this World Series of Good was a pretty good deal indeed.

[Images: The World Series of Good, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, ESPN]