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Is poker a game of skill, or a game of chance?
| Many times this subject has been debated but this topic has probably never been more in focus, because of the 2011 crack down on the poker market by the U.S. government. This Friday has become known as “Black Friday” in the world of poker and will probably affect every poker player somehow. U.S. Southern District of New York revealed indictments against three major companies in the poker business including illegal gambling, fraud and money laundering. The Money laundering and fraud indictments should not be related to the game of poke; this is a problem that may relate to greed and the lack of conscience of business leaders of these companies. So if we look aside from the fraud and money laundering indictments and focus on the part of illegal gambling, what determines the game to be illegal according to U.S. law and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act? In U.S. law and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act section 5362 for definitions you can read the following text; the Act defines a bet or wager to include risking something of value on the outcome of a contest, sports event or a game subject to chance. The part of “game subject to chance” restriction is designed by the author to include Internet poker in the act. So in conclusion if poker was not determined to be a game of chance, but rather a game of skill, this would totally change the legal status of poker forever. Not only in the U.S.A., probably all around the world. Now perhaps you understand why this is such a hot topic today? In all games and sports you need a certain portion of luck to win, the wind can blow any way, but the major part of what determines the winner in a skill game should be related to the player’s skills. If not, it should not be determined as a skill game but rather as a game of chance like lottery. In poker there are many famous and successful professional player’s, are these the luckiest persons alive or, do they posses some skills? A study was released in 2009 by Cigital.Inc, performed on the behalf of companies in the poker industry, which would reveal the impact of chance in the game of Texas Hold’em. How much of the outcome in a game of Texas Hold’em was determined by chance and how much was determined by skill? The dealing of the cards has always been the main argument for people who want to determine poker as a game of chance and classify it as illegal gambling. If this part of the game would majorly determine the winners in poker games, then it would probably classify as a game of chance. What the study could conclude was that if every player stayed in the game until “showdown”, and played their cards, it would simply be a game of chance. But player decision to stay in the game or fold made other factors count in this game. So from that they made the following assumption; measure how often a game goes to “showdown” and it will state how often chance determines the winner. Over one hundred million hands of Texas Hold’em were analyzed in order to perform this study and the result was as follows: 75, 7 % of the time the winner was determined by other players folding to one single player who took the pot. 24, 3 % of the time the game went to “showdown”, but only 50, 3 % of these were won by the player with the best 5-card hand. The rest was won by players with the worse 5-card hand owing to the fact that opponent players folded before the actual “showdown”. These facts are hard to look away from, I think that this study determines that this is a game of skill and poker professionals are not the luckiest people alive. Many professional poker players are promoting these facts in order to get their skills and the game of poker recognized as a serious mind game, educating and informing is probably the best way to do this. Chocolate Poker Team represents a European poker site and has made it their goal to promote poker as a skill game, but still they don’t deny that luck has some impact. You can tell from the last comment in their every poker school; good luck at the poker tables! |
About the Author
At the Chocolate Pokers sites you can learn more about Poket Tells and online poker games.
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