Poker is a game of skill and a game of luck. This is inherently obvious to anyone who has ever played more than 10k hands. Conversely, it is strange that people keep mentioning trading or sports betting as if they are analogous to poker, as neither of these implicitly involve luck.

This is terrible logic. If you play one hand against Durrr you re not even money. You re probably 40-60 dog. The stakes would be low and the percentage of times you would have a meaningful confrontation would be low, so any losses you incur will be imperceptible, but that doesn't mean you re 50-50.

Moreover, you have to establish that the game sub-units you compare are comparable and there are very good arguments to be made they are not.

tennis and golf are not gambling. You can gamble on them, which is a bit of a legal gray area actually, but the activity is not gambling.

If you were to establish an interstate website accepting bets on your golf games you could expect to get shut down eventually if the DoJ had enough time on their hands.

I am just saying that poker is gambling, always has been, always will be. Say otherwise and 99% of people will roll their eyes. You can be skilled at it, but it's gambling.

And your golf example you are changing it to a bet. You can play golf or tennis or chess without gambling. You can't play poker without gambling. You can make the stakes small or even play money, but it's gambling. IF you make it real money and fund it using interstate commerce you are violating the UIGEA.

You're being intentionally obtuse here.

Advance apologies: Much of what follows comes off rather harsh and critical, maybe even a little insulting. I mean all of it with all due respect and in a spirit of civil, intellectual debate.

There are many studies that purport to do this. All of them, in fact, play fast and loose with their definitions of "luck" and "skill" in order to claim that they've demonstrated things that they haven't. Point me to a couple of your favorites and I'll explain what's wrong with them.

I think this is a fine definition of luck vs skill in poker.

In no way is it clear that the outcome of a hand in which someone gets it in behind and wins was determined predominantly by luck or that the outcome of a hand in which someone bluffs an opponent off a better hand was determined predominantly by skill. Consider the following example:

10bb deep HUNL, players are only allowed to shove or fold:

SB is dealt 76s. BB is dealt j2o. SB goes allin, BB folds. In this case, it is pretty clear that luck played an enormous role in the outcome. It is abundantly clear that both players made the right play. They played their hands with a maximum degree of skill. The determining factor was that the hands were dealt in such a way that the SB gets to win, irrespective of who had "the best hand."

This is not an exceptional or contrived example. It is a simplified case of what happens in a very large share of hands that don't go to showdown in a poker game played by skilled players. The idea that hands that don't go to showdown are hands in which skill has prevailed (typically accompanied by the even more silly idea that hands must fall into one of the two categories "skill hand" or "luck hand" and you can then count them up and reach a conclusion) is exactly the sort of willfully ignorant, wholly unsubstantiated claim upon which "skill predominates" arguments rely. Hands that don't go to showdown always depend to at least some degree, often to a very great degree, on the cards dealt.

No, it doesn't show that. It shows that actions matter. Switch the words in your argument around and you could just as easily say "If different cards can produce a different result despite the action remaining the same, that surely shows that the cards are more important than the action, does it not?" Which is no more or less reasonable than what you said.
If you want to convince me that actions matter X amount and cards matter Y amount and X and Y are numeric quantities that refer to the same scale, its gonna take a lot more than this.

In a very trivial sense this is true. You could always have folded and lost 0. However, when stacks are short and one player is dealt AA and another is dealt KK and the guy with KK loses all his money no one in their right mind believes that that outcome was determined more by skill than by chance.

Again, the argument that cards don't matter in hands that don't go to showdown is almost indescribably silly. I don't understand how people who've played poker can make this argument with a straight face.

it boggles my mind that US players / politicians / activists waste any time focusing on the skill/luck/gambling "debate". It's a form of gambling in which both skill and luck will affect results ffs, who cares.

The point ought to be, it's a basic civil liberty issue. Government has no business telling tax-paying, rational adults what they can and can't spend their money on as long as it doesn't negatively affect anyone else. If Joe Public wants to spend 75% of his weekly salary on scratchcards, he's allowed to do it. If he wants to spend it on alcohol or cigarettes, or dump it at the local casino, no problem. If he wants to deposit $20, $200 or $20k on pokerstars, what's the difference? It's his ****ing money. You trust him to vote, and you're happy to take his taxes. Let the poor guy play poker on the internets. Life's too short.

What do you mean "implicitly involve luck?"

+1

Poker involves luck because the game inherently involves chance. Neither trading upon the market or betting on sports involves chance. The latter two simply appear to involve luck because the variables in play are so monstrous there is a consequential unpredictability.

I see what you mean, but you're wrong. Random chance still has an obvious impact on results in both these fields, though it's more difficult to quantify.

Anyway, the whole skill argument is stupid and unnecessary. There are state sponsored lotteries all over the US ffs

Can someone explain to me why I am allowed to buy a lottery ticket, which is completely 100% luck? And how this is legal but poker, which clearly has at least elements of skill, is illegal?

Not true at all. Nothing in life is random it is simply perceived that way. Google determinism if interested.

You're right that the skill argument is an irrelevancy and it is slightly mind-boggling that it is so consistently mentioned. It frankly does not matter if your chances of winning are 1%. The American government is founded upon the notion that government exists to preserve the rights of its citizens; as Paine, Franklin or Adams would have told you, government is only justified in restricting rights when it is necessary for the preservation of society and the rights of its members - i.e. it is justifiable to restrict the rights of a citizen who attempts to violate the rights of another. There is no justification for preventing an individual from gambling with his own money and to do so is totalitarian.

Civil government is filled by people motivated by ambition. Such individuals view policies in light of how they will reflect upon their careers rather than in light of the relative merit of any given policy as a whole. As a ban on lotteries would not have a beneficial effect upon a politician's career such a move is not pursued. Conversely, it is more beneficial for a politician to either ignore or take a tough line on gambling than advocate it. In consequence arguments founded upon logic or the economic benefits of gambling taxation make little headway.

That's a good poast.

In Switzerland, you're allowed to play a game for money, but your not allowed to bet on the outcome of a game where you aren't playing. Even though I think it would be best if you were able to bet on whatever, that still makes more sense that the DOJ's thing.

So therefore craps isn't a game of chance?

"Nothing in life is random" and poker "inherently involves chance" is a contradiction.

Fwiw, as we understand physics today, randomness is observed at the quantum level.

meh, if we replace "random chance" with "unforseen/intangible external influences" I'm sure you get my point. But yeah, the whole skill debate is a distraction as gambling is perfectly legal in the US, as is spending money on the internet. It's just combining the two that's somehow frowned upon.

Welcome to the United States of Christianity.

This is exactly why campaigns for nationally elected officials should be publicly funded. We don't even live in a Democracy anymore because any loud minority with deep pockets can basically write public policy for the entire country. Politicians are disgusting. I miss the days when they used to not be slaves to their donors, and only cared about what their constitutes cared about. Pandering to get re-elected is one thing, this is something completely different and evil however.

It's obviously simply my opinion that nothing in life is random, there are counter arguments and Im open minded to the possibility Im wrong, however I disagree that actual randomness is observed at the quantum level, and with your insinuation that this is generally accepted amongst academics. I don't want to go too off-topic, but quantum-inspired arguments against determinism are generally founded upon Bell's Theorem, and the reasoning behind rejecting them can be found in: Niall Shanks, 'Quantum Mechanics and Determinism' in The Philosophical Quarterly', Vol. 43, No. 170 (Jan 1993) pp. 20-37.

Your first point is right, poker isn't truly random, and hypothetically if you had access to how cards had been randomized you would be able to identify your opponents hands. Card counting is a simplistic example of how card games aren't truly random. Although online sites use more sophisticated methods of generating randomness than can be reached through mere shuffling, they are still not truly random and in the past, when technology was less sophisticated, RNGs have been cracked. I still refer to poker as a game of chance however as it is a game built around chance. If you endeavour to remove that element of chance you are cheating. This is not the case in trading or sports betting so long as you do not attempt to 'fix' the outcome of events or engage in insider trading.

Fwiw you have never lived in a democracy. The US is a constitutional republic that currently leans towards oligarchy due to its two-party system. Also, it's obviously very, very bad that politicians are slaves to their donors, but even if they weren't they would always be slaves to something or some section of society. There is no perfect political system, and even in some supposedly ideological situation in which politicians simply did things based upon their constituents wishes, as soon as a dissenting voice emerged you would probably always end up in either a tyranny of the majority or a tyranny of the minority situation.

Except for the point about requiring a bets (and raking them), the most important part of the analogy, these poker sites wouldn't be shut down.

The DOJ response doesn't say playing poker is illegal, they don't even mention tournament poker, so they aren't treating poker different than any other game.

The unlawful (not specifically authorized) betting isn't even what makes it illegal, if the sites were ran Monte Carlo (play chip) style and the players made side bets between themselves with no assistance from the site it wouldn't be illegal.

They might even have an argument for assisting unlawful real money betting if they didn't rake the pots, again it isn't poker gambling that the DOJ is prosecuting but rather the web site that profits from the promotion of the gambling.

If a poker site made it's money by charging an hourly fee to use it's tables, or some other business model like advertising, the arguments you are making might actually be relevant, but as these sites were ran it doesn't matter if they were promoting poker, chess, go, bridge, or scrabble - raking the game is and always has been a gambling business, on the internet or in your living room in most states.

I have no clue what I'm doing..

I want to play blackjack online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play poker online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play the horse races online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play chess online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play around with some sports betting online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play the stock market online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play video games online for money. Is that legal?

I want to play around and bet on the next President online for money. Is that legal?


I want to take some money that I have saved, just to blow it, and gamble it up online. I need to find a bank online. Is that legal?

I know absolutely nothing about any of the above.. Humor me.. What's legal and what's illegal?

No apologies needed. People can disagree without being disagreeable.


If you look at most of the studies you will see that they distinguish skill in poker from chance in poker in the manner I described and you (and most others agree) is "fine definition." If you want to examine the studies yourself, you can find an old list here: http://theppa.org/old-forums/topic/334. If you want the more recent ones too, ask (I would provide them now but I am not at my work computer).

You are contriving a game now, not talking about poker.

Your example is actually more indicative of skill being the main factor. You are effectively saying "imagine cards X, if you are a skilled player you know there is only one correct play to make with these cards" and that statement is clearly wrong if you take out the key phrase "if you are a skilled player you know." Skill is the predominant factor in how this particular hand was played even though it had nothing to do with this being the hand dealt.

Sorry, it is completely contrived and requires acceptance of certain postulated facts in order to be true.

I had to bold where you put the word skilled again because without it that point fails.

As to the real point, of course most hands are hands where the actual cards are INFLUENCING the outcome. Also clearly INFLUENCING the outcome of most hands is skill. I do not accept the simple assertion that it is impossible to measure the relative influence between the two. I do accept that it is a very difficult thing to measure with precision. I think we already have enough precision to pass the legal test and more research is occurring to try and further measure the ratio.

You forget the key point. Players can change their actions, they cannot change their cards.



I think I begin to see the real issue. It seems to me we are not talking about skill in the same way. You are using skill to refer to good play only. I use the word skill to refer to both bad and good play. In a similar manner, it would be incorrect to call a bad golf swing "chance" or "luck" because a golf swing, no matter how good or bad, is ALWAYS an act of skill on the part of the golfer. Likewise, whether to check, bet, raise, call or fold is also an act of skill, no matter how stupid, obvious, complex, or brilliant.

They don't. The point is not that the cards do not matter. The point, as no one who plays poker could deny with a straight face, is that who wins the pot when there is no showdown does not DEPEND on the actual cards. At least I have never played in a game where a folding player gets all or part of the pot because they folded a better hand than the winner had.

The distinction between "influenced by" and "depended on" cannot be understated. They are not the same.

Skallagrim

I fail to find any legal relevance under current law to the assertion that charging a time fee is legally different from a rake. Generally speaking, any kind of fee to play counts as "consideration" under most gambling laws.

tamiller866, please click this link to the website of the Massachusetts, USA company WorldWinner: http://www.worldwinner.com/ They charge fees to facilitate wagering between human players in a large variety of online games.

After checking them out I would be interested in hearing you explain why their games are legal but poker is not.

Skallagrim

Seems like the DOJ doesn't really try to "get it"

^ Man, wtf is that?! Those aren't all skill games.

Perfect example of how ****ed up a system is that is meant to keep business "straight", but instead it breeds "creativity" and deceipt.

Welcome to the land of the Holy Loopholes. Have one and the gates of Heaven will open to you. Do not and it's straight to Hell.