As a lawyer who has followed the
skill game litigation closely for several years, I think the Cepheus program both helps and hurts future litigation. I blogged about this in more detail (
HERE and
HERE), but the quick takeaways are:
Cepheus helps the skill argument in two respects. First, Cepheus provides mathematical proof that poker strategy is not limited to a single hand or single decision but must be evaluated over a longer timeframe. More specifically, Cepheus is a rebuttal to judicial focus on the fact that a skilled player is still "subject to defeat at the turn of a card." Second, Cepheus--as a GTO strategy--essentially states that chance is irrelevant to its long-term expectation. So, in a weighing of the relative effects of chance and skill, Cepheus is arguably the epitome of a complete skill approach to poker.
On the other hand, Cepheus also hurts the skill game argument. If two players (or programs) play each other using a GTO strategy, the end result of their game will be determined solely by chance. This rather counter-intuitive result calls the skill game argument into question by itself. Also, the implication is that any game between players of roughly similar skill will likewise be determined predominately by chance. This theory is observed in real life where skilled poker players seek out weaker players in order to leverage their skill advantage (i.e., "bum hunting", setting up private games with "whales" or "fish", etc.). So, the ultimate poker skill is not bluffing, or bet-sizing, or range-balancing--it's game selection. But selling "bum hunting" as a positive poker skill to a court is a dubious proposition.