Comparison with baseball as an argument that poker is a game of skill?

[Skallagrim]

I am hardly saying that "just because a hand doesn't reach showdown it means the cards weren't important."

What I am saying, is that if the hand doesnt reach showdown then the random distribution of the cards did not DETERMINE it.

When mtgordon posted "n fact I would say that the skill comes from knowing when to check/bet/call which is largely influenced by the community cards (obviously in combination with your cards, and your opponent's previous actions and likely future actions)," he was placing the community cards and our cards as only ONE part of a largeR spectrum of considerations that influence a decision.

INFLUENCE DOES NOT EQUAL DETERMINE.

The legal test is: where a game has "51% or more of the result(s) DETERMINED by chance," it is a game of chance.

Anybody ever heard of intervening causes, like a human decision?

And if you believe the card DETERMINES the decision most of the time, you have no idea what is really going on.

Skallagrim