Quote:
Originally Posted by DMoogle
Does gambling have to be neutral EV? Does it have to be negative EV? Or is the definition based on the sample size, and only ceases to be gambling after a certain % confidence level of "winning" or "losing" has been reached?
Play roulette for a million spins with the same bet every time at any casino, and you'll surely (for all practical purposes) lose money. Does that mean it's not gambling?
There are basically three definitions of gambling that get tossed around in these forums. And that is why some people (including me) refer to poker as a "skill game"--it depends on your definition.
The three definitions are:
1.
Life is gambling. Another way to put this is that we gamble (take risks, with our money or our life) every day. Driving a car is a fairly risky activity, but most of us still do it. We decide that the reward (for example, driving to work to make money) is worth the risk of dying in a auto accident.
2.
Any game or activity that involves a wager is gambling. You could call this the dictionary definition of gambling. Under this definition, the office football pool, slot machines, and playing poker all fall under the heading of gambling.
3.
Any game where money is wagered, and where luck is more important than skill in deciding the outcome, is gambling. This is how many state laws are written, often differentiating between games that are "predominantly skill" or "predominantly luck".
Some argue that any card game is mostly luck. After all, it depends on what cards you get, right? But that can't be true, unless a lot of top bridge players are deluding themselves about what their results and tournament ranking points mean.* I'm not aware of any serious person who would say that bridge and roulette both equally belong under definition #2.**
So, the PPA and others are arguing, state-by-state, that the relevant state law should be written to, or already does, consider poker as a skill game.
The "Is poker a skill game?" argument unltimately affects US income tax law as well. Since a professional poker player is considered a "gambler" by the IRS, that player has to jump through several hoops that others who are self-employed don't have to deal with.
For example, a poker player can be asked to prove that "gambling" is indeed his profession. The usual tests are whether gambling is his primary income, and whether gambling takes most of his working hours. Someone who is self-employed, but not classified as a gambler, could have several different part-time businesses that don't meet any of the "professional gambler" tests.
So, is poker gambling? Like everything else in poker, it depends--in this case, on which definition you are using.
*And of course in duplicate bridge, there are pairs (2-person teams) that rise to the top of the rankings WHILE PLAYING THE SAME CARDS AS OTHER PAIRS IN A TOURNAMENT.
**While bridge isn't really comparable to a poker cash game as far as wagering, both bridge and poker tournaments are played to win cash prizes. The are also tournaments with cash prizes in chess, Scrabble, and many other skill games.