Comment by candybar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by candybar | Hacker News Reader

As a casual poker player, I find this line of reasoning specious. Sports betting, blackjack and even roulette with a biased wheel are all games of skill by this definition. Poker games are designed specifically to appeal to our gambling instinct so that better players can play the house while worse players gamble away their chips. It's true that from the perspective of the best players, it's not truly gambling, but they are not the ones gambling laws are written to protect. This isn't too different from a casino owner saying - I'm not gambling, I make money every day. You may not be gambling but your customers are. The same is true of poker - even if you're not gambling, your opponents are.

Edit: Will downvoters explain their reasoning? Btw, someone else said something about how poker is a game of luck at low skill level and game of chance at high skill level but that's not really how it works. Poker is a game of skill if you're playing against bad players because the game is consistently beatable with sufficient skills. The better and more sound your opponents become, not just relative to you but on an absolute basis, the more important the role of luck becomes.

There is a big difference though, and it revolves around choice. A casino owner can not claim, that a roulette player can choose to get better. At some point, the "house" gets to a theoretically optimal edge (either by fixing the broken roulette wheel, or kicking out card counters). They will always have that mathematical edge.

In a poker game, any player can choose to get better, so much so you get to a a point where both players are playing game theory optimal. At that point, there is NO edge.

PS- support the PPA if you can!

There's a pretty fundamental difference between house-banked games where no player has a long term positive expecation and peer to peer skill games where better players will be able to gain an advantage by outplaying their opponents.

Roulette is a particularly bad example as there is no decision (well, there's one decision on American Roulette tables that is worse than every other) that changes your expectation on the amount wagered.

That's exactly the top commenter's point. The law doesn't hinge on the distinction between a house-banked game (like blackjack) and a house-hosted, peer-to-peer game (like poker). The distinction between skill/no-skill is less meaningful than the fact that you point out.

Nontheless, the law (and thus the article) is about the former distinction.

I wanted to disagree at first, but actually I think you are making a valid point. There are obvious ways to treat poker as a game of skill, but this ignores the fact that gambling laws aren't just about some mathematical question of whether it's possible to think of a strategy that gets you positive EV (for poker, the answer is yes). Poker has certain properties which make it addictive to certain types of players who will most certainly lose, and the question is not whether it is possible to win through skill, but whether the less-skilled players should be protected from the psychologically-deceiving nature of the game. Even if skilled poker players might have the same numerical advantage as skilled basketball players, poker is different in its addictive nature and in the results it produces for the "losers" - which can be destructive.

"Game of skill" vs. "game of luck" is not a binary distinction, but the law pretends it is. I think it's definitely closer to the "skill" end of the continuum than the "luck" end though.

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