A New York federal judge ostensibly ending the long raging argument over whether poker is a game of luck or a game of skill. Of course the honest answer is Both, but the question remains of which influence is more significant in the game, as that determination will play a major role in how (and whether) the game of online poker may be legalized in this country. And the ruling is: it’s more skill than luck.
This is of course a huge boon to poker players everywhere as it vindicates an oft-ridiculed vocation as lacking in any intellectual or competitive value. The common definitions of gambling, explained the judge (and that used in formulating the long-hated UIGEA that effectively made online poker illegal in the United States) is that the predominance of the element of luck is what defines a game as “gambling”. Now that a federal judge has ruled the game of poker more skill than luck it no longer so easily falls under the caption of gambling and hence may soon no longer be restricted by the law.
The case involved a Staten Island man charged with running an illegal gambling operation out of his basement. But as that “operation” was actually a Texas Hold’em game Judge Jack Weinstein determined in his ruling on Tuesday, August 21st, 2012 that the man had not violated the federal anti-gambling law.
This is the first time a court ruling has examined poker’s status as a game of skill or luck.