I agree and I never said any such thing.

There is an economic case, yes - but that economic case has remained unchanged for years.

There is also a libertarian case which has also remained unchanged for years. So far, these arguments, which do not distinguish between poker and casino games, have failed to carry the day with most of the powers that be. I am with you in wanting to see that change.

There is also a Court case; a case to be made under existing law. Do you know anybody who plays poker regularly who would not agree in general that how you play your cards is more important to your "outcome" than the cards you are dealt? This does not mean that one is important and the other is not. It simply asks which is more important. That this is not easy to prove with respect to poker does not make it impossible. That the relationship between skill and chance may not be capable of precise mathematical expression does not mean it is still impossible to say which is more important; nor does it mean that mathematical and statistical studies are not useful to answer the question even if they cannot answer that question in the specific way the law wants it answered.

As to the point regarding the NY law it is not correct to say that all the prosecution has to prove is that there is "material chance" in the game. The correct expression of NY law is that the prosecution must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that poker is a game "in which the outcome depends upon a material degree of chance." It is therefore not sufficient to merely show the presence of a material degree of chance, that element of chance must be what the outcome of the game depends upon to a material degree. There are varying legal interpretations of what this may mean. A leading NY authority, and some recent court decisions, suggest (but do not guarantee) that the NY test is not really much different from the predominance test.

But the bottom line with respect to the legal case, at least IMHO, is that even if (as you say) the "arguments would be a stretch" I fail to see why you would argue for people to stop making them. Poker is a "game of predominantly skill." We all know it and that is why most of us play it and study it on forums like this one. Even though the state of law may be prejudiced against us, there is inherent value in challenging that prejudice.

To cut this long post a little shorter, please consider that what is really going on now is real move to make online poker explicitly legal and licensed in the US. The move is not to make online sports betting nor online casino games legal. The reason this is the case is because both the industry and the politicians have come around to seeing poker in a different light from those games. The campaign to get poker treated differently from those games is paying off. And a part of that campaign is the argument, including the legal argument, that poker is a game of skill.

It is giving up on this argument that is the bad move. Continuing to advocate this argument is the good move overall, even if it does not reap direct or immediate legal benefits.

Skallagrim

Another good post.

The amount of chance is inversely relational to the amount of time you play, if the time period is infinite then luck no longer exists. So you could say that nobody really gets lucky, they just have good timing.

Good timing is essential in live poker, as one can't really play enough hands to compensate for bad timing, and timing is even more more crucial in live tournaments as all it takes is one bad time to end your tournament, and you can never win or be eliminated from a tournament with a skill play (bluff).

Yet this form of poker is legal in many states and promoted in all of them as it is broadcasted nation wide, whereas internet cash poker is illegal to promote even though the internet player is able to play enough volume to mathematically eliminate timing and win enough pots with skill (bluffing) to earn a profit.

The problem is that outcome needs to be defined.

Optimal play by all participants after one hand means that everyone played the hand perfectly.

After infinity hands, if everyone played poker optimally, then the outcome would be that everyone breaks even (ignoring the rake).

ETA: Just noticed tamiller's post above mine. Just wanted to note that an SNG or an MTT is the same as a single cash game hand in that they are all sample sizes of 1.

Interstate commerce is the real reason it can never be legalized. This is why it's already perfectly legal in licensed card rooms across the country. It really doesn't matter that one judge begged the question in one opinion that poker may or may not be a game of skill or chance. Even if it were a game of 100% skill and 0% chance, interstate commerce would shut it down in some form, hence the reason why our federal model is so f'ed up. Thank the founders and their BS 'states' rights' philosophy for screwing up poker in 2011.

i don't understand your response here....the casino doesn't "play" anything. they make no decisions. they make money because they set up the games where the mathematics are in their favor and know whatever the swings are..it will eventually end up with them winning. games like poker cannot have the math "set up" to favor the casino...so instead they charge a rake or time charge.

****, the debate is mislead. Why it has to be "skill vs luck". So we, as players, play against "luck"? No! We play against other players FFS!

True, but infinity doesn't exist; it's a concept. So in the real world one assigns a luck factor to individual outcomes, not long term theoretical ones.

I totally agree, but even the DOJ did not make any objection to tournament poker, and I doubt they would call any of these sites that offer cash tournaments for other card games gambling businesses if they offered poker tournaments.

Poker sites are considered gambling businesses primarily because they rake each hand individually signaling the completion of a game, leaving the court no choice but to make it's predominant determination based on a single hand rather than a sample size.

Whereas I believe if a poker site charged an hourly fee for a seat at the table, poker would have to be judged by either a buy-in (like a tournament is judged) or by the hour as it was charged.

I'm not sure poker could pass the predominance test after a single buy-in or hour, but it would at least give the lawyers a fighting chance - and more importantly I think per buy-in is the way we should be asking the legislators to view poker.

We should tell congress they can regulate the site so that a player can't play at a table he isn't sufficiently rolled for in order to reduce the effect variance takes from his account, that way when someone goes busto we can say mathematically that it was not lady luck who stole his money.

Those who know what they are doing don't concern themselves with variance, those who don't pray to it.

Yes, yes! And fortune, chance, luck, etc., are both the medium through which we play, and the only thing delaying the inevitable routing of a weaker player by a better one. Sorry, but a game like this just isn't gambling in the sense most laymen understand it (as an act of betting and praying).

Another thought occurred to me today: can we imagine a model where the govt can make anything comparable to what lotteries generate in terms of revenue, that won't be -EV for good players? I see the most pathetic degenerates at bodegas and delis nearly every day (I frequently see the same borderline mentally ill people) buying piles of lottery tickets, a game of chance that is both addictive/destructive and entirely -EV (I'll defer to more experienced gamblers if there are some situations where buying lotto tickets is +EV, like when the prize-pool is inflated or whatev, but it's generally -EV). Anyway, the govt proves w/ lotteries it could really give a **** as long as it makes $.

some pretty decent unbiased advice right here...

you miss the point on something here. you are arguing, it seems, that chess is a game of skill because using GTO strategy white can always win, whereas in poker the winner will be random. the fact that someone can always win by playing GTO doesn't mean that a game is a "game of skill" or not.

First, a game of skill means that there are strategies that can be employed in order to improve one's chances of winning. Now, unfortunately almost all games are a game of skill in the sense that you can employ various strategies that are more or less +EV -EV. However, there is a big difference between the skill at a game like craps or tic-tac-toe, and a game like chess. This gets in to "game complexity theory". Anyone who wants to start off with something interesting about this, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity

At some point, a game becomes complex enough that the skill involved in order to win becomes a difficult thing to attain. Poker definitely is within that realm, and I'm not even going to bother trying to prove it in this post, as I think many other people have. I find it quite telling that people are still crushingly better than the best NLHE programs, whereas in chess the best program in the world today is probably better than the best grandmaster. A lot of this has to do with the incomplete information involved with poker, but not everything (for example, Go is a complete information game where programs are still way behind the best players).

That's all for now, just some food for thought.

The farther one deviates from GTO, the more one will lose, over the long term. Once people begin to realize what GTO play is, standard strategies will shift. Someone who drastically deviates from GTO, to say, exploit a fish, is in turn opening up the opportunity for a GTO player to have a higher winrate versus him. I predict that GTO play for all forms of poker will be discovered by supercomputers within the next decade, and the game will essentially die online, much like backgammon. Let's enjoy it while we can! My point is that there is only one correct "move" for any situation in any form of poker, just like chess, go, backgammon, etc. It just hasn't been discovered yet. All of the skill in poker lies in the ability to play as close to GTO as possible. Reads, HUDs, notes, and player tendencies will be completely irrelevant once the game is solved.

I think the point Zizek is trying to make is that poker is not legally ambiguous because it is a game of skill or a game of chance. Proving the issue one way or another doesn't matter. It's a legislative grey area because if the laws were written more specifically or had exhaustive lists then changing the rules a little or playing a different variant would be allowed because it's not "on the list." General principles are codified with the intent of making gambling illegal except in select circumstances.

As Skall has pointed out, the skill/luck debate is the legal corner we are stuck in. However, that is not why laws discriminate against poker. If the laws were somehow interpreted to allow poker as a skill game, the laws will often be amended to specifically name poker and make it more or less illegal, to close the loophole. No legislatures are looking at gambling laws and saying "oops, we accidentally made this law ambiguous so now it makes peer to peer poker online illegal even though it's a skill game and we want to allow it." They either intended to include poker or perhaps don't care.

The only gambling politicians are really interested in allowing are games where they are the house, e.g., lotto.

Skill vs. luck is not the real issue. SDNY will, as it appears that they may have already, concede that poker is a game of skill. That will not change the fact that they will still view it as gambling. It seems that a lot of people want to view gambling as a game that is either 50-50, or less than 50% chance of winning.

Certain gambling games are legal, such as state lotteries and scratch-off tickets, which we all know are -EV.

Others, like horse racing, have exemptions.

While sports betting is strictly forbidden, although the most skilled at it are + EV.

I just don't think that winning the skill/luck debate is going to be enough. We need and want the same treatment as horse racing. We need to make the politicians understand that we will keep playing, regardless of what immoral law they have, whether that is under a US regulated, protected site, or one of the many others that are still open to us.
The fact that it is a peer-peer game should be hammered over and over.

I think players need to continue to play, wherever they can.

I can't believe this needs to be said, but it does (and no offense to DS kids, btw)(yes I know, tl;dr):

A Down Syndrome kid can beat Kobe Byant in one game of HORSE if Kobe is sick with the flu and having the worst day of his basketball life while having blurry vision and delusions due to high fever, and the DS kid is having the game of his life.

This does NOT show how basketball is a game of "luck" (statistical variance).

One short term result does not change that 999,999,999 times out of 1,000,000,000 Kobe beats the poor DS kid. It does not take away the skill Kobe has to be able to do this.

The level of variance in poker is higher than the silly example, but is nonetheless levied against skill. The worst player can win X times in a row versus the best player ever, but given longer term results, the best player will SMASH the worst player predictably.

Losing X times in a row to a bad player is like Kobe shooting 15% for a game. It may happen, but rarely. The more likely and consistent result is Kobe shooting upwards of 50% and dropping 25 points on dat ass. This is like a skilled poker player beating the bad player.

"Luck" is a superstitious perception of variance and standard deviation. "Luck" doesn't exist. The DS kid or the bad poker player didn't get "lucky", they happened to get the favor of being there for random variance at the right time. It's statistical anomaly. To personalize it as "luck" is just oversimplification because of a lack of understanding of mathematics and science. It's illogical. It could of been anyone, but it had to be someone...that isn't "luck", it's anomaly or random variance. They key word is RANDOM. Being "lucky" has nothing to do with it...that is an after-the-fact description of a result, not a before-hand prediction. And Kobe and the good poker player are not "lucky" when they "run well", they are experiencing the normal variance due from the edge they hold in skill over the field.

And as I pointed out earlier, no one needs to play each other for skill to be judged. Kobe doesn't need to ever play the DS kid for everyone to know he's more skilled and not just "luckier". The same is true for two different level poker players. Ranking systems work on this very principle. You don't need to play all 1,000,000 players in a ranking system to prove your edge...your results versus their results in the same game (the control) is proof enough of skill differences. This is why anyone who knows anything about math or poker require a HUGE sample size to judge rankings and results in general.

Poker is predominately "luck"? If by that you mean predominately random variance, then sure...only if you suck at the game (which is most people BTW). The same would be true of any sucky basketball player. The worse you are, the more random variance is involved.

Poker is predominately a game of skill? If by that you mean the individual players skill determines how much of a factor variance is, how the variance effects profit/loss, then sure...only if you are good at the game. The same would be true of any good basketball, baseball, or football player. The better you are, the less random variance is involved in results.

Anyone who thinks poker is a game of "luck", please play me HU 1,000 times at stakes I can afford as soon as online poker is legal in the U.S. again. You'll decry "bad luck", and I'll have your money through skill. You can only argue your "luck" factor through 10 or 100 results, not a thousand. I'll even make it easier...pick any NLHE tournament setting, SNGs, MTTSNGs, MTTs, and after a set number of games we'll prop bet on who comes out ahead (for SNGs I'll stick with 1,000...for MTTSNGs I'll go with 2,000...for MTTs I'll go with 4,000...these numbers should SURELY be enough to weather variance.)

(disclaimer: this offer is not open to pros who are just being dicks and want to take my money because they think they have an edge and feel like posing as a "luck"-believing player. It is precisely because my understanding of skill versus variance I won't waste my time playing you...I'll lose or break damn-near even...F that. )

PS. Those saying whether it's game of skill or not is irrelevant to getting it legalized are correct. That would assume government looks out for our best interests which as bad as believing in "luck"...illogical to the max. They care about re-election and interests who pay that re-election expense; power. This self serving motivation is all that matters. If the special interests want legalized poker now, we'll get it after they stall it as long as possible to extort as much lobbying money as possible from those interests...and not a moment sooner. This is about which lobbying group wants it versus which lobbying group doesn't. The highest bidder will prevail. The only other consideration is how this effects re-election chances. For the Kentucky Senator, for example, his horse racing constituency that doesn't lobby (although some do) may vote him out even he votes for the Bill, even if he is paid more by pro-legalization lobbies to do so, thereby making the total cash involved less valuable (look up marginal utility). It's 1) about keeping power, and 2) about paying for the re-election, and possibly 3) what kind of sweetheart gimme (like a job after office, or for family member) can they get that outweighs both 1 and 2. It all comes down to marginal utility for the politician scumbags, not whether this is a skill game or not. You're dreaming if you think government works logically or for your best interests as a citizen (afterall, we vote them in which is just a manifestation of an informal logical fallacy; argumentum ad populum: appeal to polls, popularity, or votes).

I disagree with virtually every point; however, I'm be happy to be shown a flaw(s) in my thinking - which is my purpose for posting.

"The farther one deviates from GTO, the more one will lose, over the long term. Once people begin to realize what GTO play is, standard strategies will shift. Someone who drastically deviates from GTO, to say, exploit a fish, is in turn opening up the opportunity for a GTO player to have a higher winrate versus him."

Against a person not playing GTO, any deviation from maximally exploitive play will make less in the long run in comparison.

Of course, against someone who's playing GTO, deviating from GTO play will lose money. But, no one is playing GTO - as you said.

"It just hasn't been discovered yet. All of the skill in poker lies in the ability to play as close to GTO as possible. Reads, HUDs, notes, and player tendencies will be completely irrelevant once the game is solved."

I'd argue the skill that produces the greatest results in poker - and always will regardless of any supercomputer - lies in finding players who are exploitable and knowing how to exploit them. There's not a strategy that produces greater results.

The correct move is the one with the greatest EV. The day the most profitable (in the sense that it's not losing money) move is following GTO, is the day everyone's is playing GTO.

Chess and backgammon have no hidden factor in the games. The two hole cards change everything. Those games having a perfect move is not comparable to GTO play; however, I think you're right in saying the impact on the game would be very similar.

Completely agree with Qtip above. GTO is not about winning the most possible, it is about being unexploitable and making it impossible to lose in the long term, no matter how your opponent plays. It is not too hard to come up with toy games where, if your opponent does not adjust, GTO is worse than an exploitable strategy.

RE: GTO play: If we are talking about poker games with more than 2 players, there is no such thing as an optimal strategy. You can devise your strategy with game theoretic concepts in mind aiming to be robust against a variety of possible opponent strategies, but there is no one strategy to rule them all.

For the GTO discussion I agree with Qtips observations.
Players aim to play maximally exploitative strategy i.e on average win the most. Even assuming one knew GTO strategy the maximal exploitative strategy only uses GTO when other opponents use GTO or to protect vs others that seek to exploit us.