By
Dan
Is Poker a Game of Skill?
It seems like a straight-forward question, doesn’t it? Is poker indeed a game of skill or are the cards that fall still determined by chance? This is the debate that will pervade the industry for quite some time to come. In Washington D.C., the Poker Players Alliance recently called a summit of some of its top advisors to discuss arguments for why poker, in the eyes of the law, should be considered a game of skill. After all, Congressman Robert Wexler has sponsored legislation called the Skill Game Protection Act that would exempt poker from internet gambling legislation such as the UIGEA and Wire Act. For now, let’s dive into some of the reasons why poker could be considered a game of skill.
Andrew Woods, Executive Director of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, who attended the meeting with the PPA last week, commented, “A lot of the states regulate poker under a statute that says games that are determined in part or whole by chance are prohibited. Games in which chance dominates over skill are prohibited. We have to demonstrate that poker is determined by skill rather than by chance.”
So how is that possible? The cards that fall in any particular poker hand are subject to chance, right? There’s a possibility that your opponent is going to two-out you on the river. There’s the chance that, when you call with 4-10 offsuit, the flop will come 10-10-10. Woods explains the arguments in the courts’ eyes: “There is inherently some element of chance, but the way that the law is written, it has to do with the outcome. There is some variance in every hand; however, your ability to bet is all about skill. You can affect your outcome. There are only two factors that determine the outcome: a person performing an action and the cards you’re turning over. The question remains: Is there any chance involved whatsoever? All of the decisions in a hand are human actions; you have to call that skill.”
The basic theory is that any decision you make, whether it’s folding when you’re dealt 8-3 or raising when you’re dealt bullets, is based on skill. How can chance come into the picture if the decisions you make are skill-related? In an article written on the GPSTS website, poker pro Howard Lederer sums up the basic questions that need to be answered: “A game is considered to be a skill game if skill predominates over chance in determining the outcome of the game. Before we can apply this test to poker we must define a number of terms as they relate specifically to poker. These terms are: skill, chance, outcome, predominance, and game (what constitutes a game of poker?).” The arguments have to focus on the word “predominates.” Does skill dominate the outcome in poker or is it the other way around?
The way to test this question, according to Woods, is to review hand histories: “The methodology I’d use is working with an online poker database. I’d determine how many hands were decided without a showdown. I’d look at how many times betting led to the outcome of the hand. The preliminary data I’ve seen is that hands are determined by what you would call skill. The problem that poker players have had for a long time is that we’ve surrendered the idea that poker is luck in the short-term and skill in the long-term. In any hand, the skill at which someone bets will determine the outcome.”
Lederer sums up the argument that poker needs to make in order to satisfy the requirements of a skill game in the eyes of a law: “If we are testing the predominance of two things and one of those things is determined to be 60% and the other 40% of an outcome, then it makes no sense to say that the thing that is 40% is predominant over the thing that is 60%. Therefore, as long we can prove that skill is 51% over chance in determining the outcomes of poker hands, we should satisfy the legal test of predominance.”
In HR 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act, games of skill are merely defined as those where competition is primarily player versus player and not player versus the house. Therefore, a poker player uses his skill at the table to dominate the competition. The bill cites mah jong, chess, and bridge as other games of skill. In information posted on Wexler’s official website, he claims, “While each of these games contains an element of chance, over any substantial interval, a player's success at any of these games is determined by that player's relative level of skill and is widely recognized as such. Games where success is predominantly determined by the skill of the players involved, as a matter of law and of policy, are distinct from the games of chance traditionally described and addressed in federal and state gambling statutes.”
The PPA recently launched the Litigation Support Network, which is designed to give its members access to a group of pre-screened lawyers in order to solicit legal advice on poker-related issues. A secondary goal of the Network is to provide online poker’s lobbying arm with access to cases where it could use its financial backing to argue that poker is a game of skill in front of a court. In cases that have been heard so far, poker has not had the resources that an organization like the PPA could bring. Moreover, the PPA could provide detailed scientific research showing that poker is, indeed, a game of skill.
The skill game argument is the next step in online poker’s future. Stay tuned to PocketFives.com for all the details.