Celebrating Enrico Fermi's 125th birthday
Bring Fermi Poker to your school or university
This year marks the 125th birthday of Enrico Fermi. To honor him, we're planning to sponsor hundreds of Fermi Poker tournaments at schools and universities.
Fermi Poker is an estimation game that combines the emotional stakes and social dynamics of poker with the sober, analytical skill of Fermi estimation. Instead of being dealt random cards, you make guesses about questions that seem unknowable at first, like “How many dentists work in the US?” You write down a secret guess, bet on it, get helpful hints, bet again, and win by either having the best guess or by bluffing everyone else out.
With these tournaments, the Fermi Foundation wants to make quantitative reasoning, world-modeling, Bayesian updating, Fermi estimation and calibration fun and social.
Interested in hosting your own Fermi Poker tournament? Write us at contact@fermi.org.
Start here
How to play
The complete rules, step by step, with an example question and a one-page rule sheet to print out.
Host a tournament
We're here to help you do it. We'll send you everything you need to run a Fermi Poker tournament, including sample questions, tips on writing your own, and potentially funding for what you need to buy.
What players learn
Fermi Poker trains a cluster of skills that are genuinely useful outside the game.
Fermi estimation
Breaking a seemingly unanswerable question into smaller parts you can actually reason about. It’s the core skill of quantitative thinking, and it’s dramatically undertaught.
Calibration
Developing an accurate sense of what you know and what you don’t. A range that’s too narrow risks missing entirely; one that’s too wide rarely wins. Over many rounds, players get better at putting numbers on their own uncertainty.
Bayesian updating
Each hint is a piece of evidence, and the interesting question isn’t whether to update but by how much. Players who learn to adjust in proportion to the evidence have a lasting advantage over those who anchor.
World-modeling
Every question is really about how the world is structured: how dense cities are, how people spend their time, what things cost. The game rewards an accurate model of the world, and builds one.
Cognitive empathy
A raise after the second hint means something. So does a long pause before a fold. And unlike regular poker, a question about car insurance plays differently against a car enthusiast than against a high schooler, so part of the game is seeing it from the other players’ side.
Knowing whom to trust
Figuring out whom to trust is most of the way to having correct beliefs. At the table, confident rhetoric and charisma say little about who estimates well; a track record does. And expertise depends on the domain: the player who nails questions about cars may be lost on biology.
An antidote to number numbness
Every question makes you weigh how big a number really is, until a million and a billion stop sounding alike.
Most of all, Fermi Poker is social. The pace is relaxed enough for real conversation between actions, and each question gives the table something concrete to argue about. Players tend to leave not just knowing who won, but a bit more informed about how the world works.
Frequently asked questions
Is it gambling?
No. You bet with play money, never real money, and nothing is dealt at random: the pot goes to the best estimate, or to the best bluff. The Fermi Poker app is rated PEGI 3 on Google Play and 13+ on the App Store.
Why Enrico Fermi?
Fermi was famous for quick, accurate estimates from very little information, and he posed questions like these to his students, which is why they’re called Fermi questions. His best-known example asked how many piano tuners work in Chicago. Fermi Poker honors him on his 125th birthday.
Who can play?
Any students who are interested, whatever their background or field of study. We recommend it from about age 13 or 14.
Do you need to know poker?
No. The rules fit on one page, and the betting works like regular poker: check, bet or raise, call, fold, or go all-in. Read the rules.
Do you need to be good at math?
No. Fermi estimation has surprisingly little to do with what’s taught in math class. What counts is knowing a bit about how the world works and breaking a question into parts you can reason about; the arithmetic stays rough. So being bad at math doesn’t mean you’ll be bad at this.
How many players do you need?
In theory, six players at a single table are enough. For sponsorship, though, we mostly consider tournaments with 18 or more players. Smaller tournaments can still get everything else they need from us, like the rule sheets and questions.
How long does a tournament take?
Plan on 2 to 3 hours of play, plus time to set up. It depends on how many play and on the ante, the bet everyone pays for each question. If a tournament runs long, raise the ante faster to speed it up.
What does a host do?
Print our rule sheets, one per table, and the question, hint and answer cards, and cut the cards out. Get poker chips, plus dry-erase markers and small whiteboards or cards for writing guesses. On the day, open with a 2–3 minute introduction to Enrico Fermi and his life, then explain the game.
Where do the questions come from?
Once you contact us, we email you PDFs with about 100 questions, each with its hints and answer. You can also write your own, for example about your country or city, and mix them in or use only yours.
Does it have to be in person?
Yes. The tournaments we sponsor take place in person.
When should it take place?
Any time from November, when our materials are ready. Ideally this year or early next year, while Fermi’s 125th birthday is still recent.
Is there support for hosts?
Yes. Once you get in touch, we email you the rule sheets and questions. If we sponsor your tournament, we also pay for what you need to buy, like poker chips, markers and whiteboards; the amount depends on the number of players. Write us at contact@fermi.org.
