How My Son's Insight May Have Saved Poker

[ElyJon]

Poker is not a game of chance at all. Casino games are a game of chance because the only legitimate way you are going to win is totally by chance. Poker I would argue is a totally different beast, not even a casino game. I believe that it is possible, although not very intuitive to say, that laws concerning casino licensing, and anti-gambling simply do not apply to poker. And it is not because poker is a game of skill, although the fact that poker can be beat by skill is part of the argument that defines what poker is. It is because poker is a non-casino game, not a game of chance at all.
To understand what poker is, you must first understand what a casino is, what exactly it is that a casino is in the business of doing. What is it that makes a casino a casino, what an illegal casino is doing that basically makes it illegal and what a legal licensed casino is licensed to do.
A licensed casino is in the business of taking bets from players on various games that are run by the casino, were the rules of the game are the rules of the casino. A player in a casino is betting against the casino. The games licensed are licensed so that a casino establishment can provide a game a player can bet against, A casino is licensed to provide games were the casino has an interest in the outcome. The games the casino provides are typically and openly in the casinos favor. The games are designed so that chance is the only factor that determines the outcome of the game. When such games are played they are illegal or licensed.
The definition in law of what an illegal gambling device is clearly includes any device like a slot machine, roulette wheel, craps table or about anything that a licensed casino would use to spread a game were a player wagers against the casino. To define anything else as an illegal gambling device is to err, and unfortunately this error is a common one in law enforcement, legislation and in the common perception.
The key difference with poker, is that it is not a game were the casino has an interest in the outcome of the game. This is a key point, because the whole thing that defines rather are not a game is illegal or subject to licensing is if there is some sort of establishment (business, person or persons) operating a game of chance were the establishments is a participant with an interest in the outcome of the game.
A really good question is are you operating a game of chance if you do not have an interest in the outcome of the game? Casinos clearly do not have an interest in the outcome of a poker game. The players clearly have an interest in the outcome of the game, however they really do not fit the definition of casino operators by sitting down and playing the game, since they do not provide the game as any kind of establishment. You could say that the players are the casino in the sense that they are who the player is playing against and they are the ones with an interest in the game. However, the simple fact about poker is that it is a zero sum game and therefore there is no real interest built into the game. So the players really do not have an interest that can be had in the game, making it impossible for them to be classified as a casino that spreads games were the casino has an interest in the game. The establishment that has the game cannot be classified as a casino because it clearly has no interest in the outcome of the game and is not making or accepting wagers.
You cannot make up numbers about rather are not poker is a game of skill that are expressed in fractions. Poker is a zero sum game. It is not possible to operate a poker game as a casino game and have potential winners or losers. The house would have no edge and the player would have no edge. In the short term rather or not any party participating in the game would be ahead or behind is totally unpredictable and the amount in the long run anyone was losing or winning would be a minuscule fraction of the total amount placed into action. Chance as a factor in poker is a total of zero, it cannot be proved any other way. In real terms poker is not a game of chance. It is a Boolean value that only relates to chance. Yes/No, True/False, Is/Not. Poker is zero sum, and zero always returns a value of No, False or not. There is no maybe value if it is zero summed.
This is the crux of poker! What makes a game a game of poker is that all the players of the game have absolutely no edge over the other players in the game. There is no inherent edge in the game, any edge that a player might have is totally inherent to the player and not at all a part of the game.
If you buy my argument here, you have to conclude logically that if there is no inherent edge in the game of poker, there is no inherent win or lose, that there is no interest possible, therefore poker is not a game of chance. If you conclude that poker is not a game of chance, your only choice left is that the only factor that can be proved to be a factor is the skill of the player.
So now we settled that (even if you did not buy it just pretend you did for the sake of argument), we still do not have as much as apples and oranges, we have something more like navels and Valencia’s or green apples and red apples. Poker to the unskilled player is still a gambling game. When you add in the rake, tokes and overhead of playing the zero sum game the only shot the majority of players have is the same shot they have at the slots or casino tables. We as a society have already decided that protecting the stupid from themselves is a very good spin point to suppress the liberties of the masses, and poker certainly has all these negative spin points (degenerate gambling, broken families, its money for milk… ad nauseam). Therefore what I wonder is what exactly is the point in proving that the game is a game of skill?