Comment by KVFinn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KVFinn | Hacker News Reader

Is this skill-based rule is why every game in a casino is so bad? The article is about how poker is starting to be considered a game of skill and so not under the restrictions of gambling, and thus legal generally. Is there a similar law that is the inverse of this that restricts casinos to games of non-skill instead of actually good games?

I mean, you'd never sit down with friends and play roulette or blackjack or any casino game just for fun, right? It's be incredibly boring because you have zero choices and without the thrill of money being on the line there is no reason to play them. I wouldn't even put them in the 'game' category. You may as well flip a coin over and over. Even card counting BlackJack is just game of not getting kicked out by the casino -- counting cards itself is simply memorizing a table and has no choices either.

I've always been mystified people can spend hours in a casino playing the least interesting games I could imagine.

Poker is the lone exception. Poker with friends for trivial stakes still good. I can think of plenty of games with similar variance so beginners would always do reasonably well against experts and they'd still be be a million times more interesting than everything else in the casino.

You'd think with all the money in the gambling industry that some effort would be put towards making the games themselves intrinsically better.

Could you open up a 'casino' anywhere that instead used games that were obviously skill based because it woudn't be considered gambling? Poker is one of the most popular casino games and it's also the only game of skill Why not more?

tldr: Why are Casino games so bad?

A casino consisting of skill based games probably wouldn't function well, unless it was entirely player vs player with the house only providing game administration and entertainment/drinks/etc. Why? There are two main ways casino's make money: betting against players, i.e. any game where the house pays money beyond bets place by the players (blackjack, roulette, etc) and incidentals, entertainment, drinks, hotel rooms, and the like. For the first you want luck based games where the house has a statistic edge where dealer/game runner skill has no affect on the outcome of the game. These games are great for the casino because all they need is a trained warm body to run the game correctly and a flow of people coming in.

Skill based games on the other hand are generally player vs player, where the house doesn't win or lose any money, like poker. The casino doesn't want to get involved with betting against the players in these types of games because to win consistently they would need to staff skilled people to play the games and pay them enough that playing the other side of the table is less lucrative. That's likely to be quite expensive. So instead casinos make money off of skill based games through the second less lucrative stream, incidentals, providing guests with food, drink, lodging, and entertainment. These are more expensive and aren't as reliable as just churning through people in non-skilled games.

tldr: Why are they so 'bad'? Because luck based games make the best money.

Gambling games are bad for the exact same reasons that grind-based are bad: people play them for the addictive reward mechanisms. If you're not affected by those mechanisms, you're usually left with garbage.

Variable rewards are also the reason why poker is one of the few games with a heavy skill component that can move large amounts of money directly between players; few people are willing to be a sucker. So losing players have to either get something else from the experience, or be convinced that they aren't losing players.

I said elsewhere in this thread that skill-based vs. luck based is a continuum. The most popular poker games tend to land on the sweet spot where "enough luck that bad players can think they're good" and "enough skill that you can actually be good" meet.

>Gambling games are bad for the exact same reasons that grind-based are bad: people play them for the addictive reward mechanisms. If you're not affected by those mechanisms, you're usually left with garbage.

Wouldn't these games be even more appealing if had the same reward mechanisms but were also intrinsically interesting?

>The most popular poker games tend to land on the sweet spot where "enough luck that bad players can think they're good" and "enough skill that you can actually be good" meet.

You'd think you'd see games along this continuum but poker is alone in the sweet spot. The other casino games aren't even worth considering.

You are insightful in pointing out that I have absolutely zero interest in playing roulette with my friends, but I really mourn the way babies have ruined my group of poker buddies.

But regardless of the luck factors, I think the real distinction is that in poker, each player is competing against the others. But in blackjack, roulette, etc, each player is competing against the house.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com