A Palo Alto entrepreneur believes he has a way for poker players to play online in the 47 U.S. states where the game has not been legalized and regulated. Arthur Pfeiffer, owner and founder of the software company Thwart Poker, has invented a new variation of poker that he believes is perfectly legal, even in places that poker is not.

The game is called Texas Block’em, a game which Pfeiffer says is totally dependent on skill. “Since my version of poker is 100% skill and involves no luck,” he told the San Francisco Examiner, “it’s not gambling and therefore is legal.”

The gist of the game is this: instead of all cards being dealt randomly, only the community cards are random. Players get to choose their hole cards during the betting rounds from the remainder of the deck. The catch is, though, that if two players pick the same card, neither of them receives it and instead each receives nothing.

“Our players actively participate in the process, as it is their card-selection decisions that determine what cards are dealt,” Pfeiffer told the Examiner.

There is some confusion in the poker community as to what the exact game mechanics will be, as Pfeiffer has developed multiple poker variations, including Hold’em Battle and Hold’em Blitz, all lumped into the Thwart Poker class of games.

Each game works slightly differently, but Pfeiffer posted on Two Plus Two that they all share the same basic structure: “On each round, each player first privately selects a card from the same face-up deck of cards. Once all players have made their selection, a player whose selection conflicts with that of another player is dealt a no-value Thwart card. Otherwise, the player is dealt the card he/she selected,” he said.

In Hold’em Blitz, for example, the flop is dealt randomly for all to see. Players then select four cards, the first one face down. After each card selection, there is a round of betting. As explained, if more than one player picks the same card, it is cancelled out and neither player receives a card that round. The best five-card hand wins. Based on information given in the Examiner article, it appears that in Texas Block’em, players will only select their two hole cards, but that isn’t entirely clear, especially since Pfeiffer did not explicitly clarify that point.

Hold’em Blitz and Hold’em Battle are currently available the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. There is a PC version of both games as well, but that appears to only have a single player versus AI feature rather than true multiplayer capabilities.

Gambling law expert I. Nelson Rose told the Examiner that Texas Block’em should be legally classified as a “contest” and not “gambling.” Rose said, “Under the law, for an activity to be considered gambling, it must contain three elements: consideration, chance, and prize. Consideration means you have to pay to participate. Chance means the activity involves luck, not skill. Prize means you can win money or something of value.” A “contest” is something that contains consideration and a prize, but no chance.

The poker community seems intrigued by the new game concept, but is skeptical. To many, it seems like a poker version of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” in which the basic decisions are quite simple, but the multilevel thinking can get quite complex. Some feel it could be easily exploitable by bots.

Pfeiffer believes that his game will appeal to poker players, even with the exciting aspect of chance removed. “In regular poker, each player relies heavily on the fixed laws of mathematics to calculate the probability that the cards dealt will give him a winning hand,” he said. “In Texas Block’em, each player relies heavily on his sense of human psychology in reading opponents to determine the probability that he can pick the right cards for a winning hand.”

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