Raid on NYC clubs underway right now.

[Skallagrim]

Dear TMTTR, there are not enough hours in the day....

I have just discovered that my online case service will only pull back federal cases from less than 25 years ago, or I have to pay an extra fee. That currently eliminates my ability to get the Backgammon case for you (the decision is from 1981). Also, I am about to leave for a vacation for 2 weeks. By the time I get back I am sure this thread will be buried and long forgotten, so when I do get that citation, I will PM it to you here on 2+2.

Otherwise I hope you are doing well.

Skallagrim

[Mr Rick]

[ QUOTE ]
What you need to understand is that until the advent of online poker, it was impossible to quantify the influence of cards v. decisions in poker. Now that that is possible, it also possible to prove as a matter of fact that in most hands the outcome is determined by the decisions made, not the cards dealt. Most players have long intuitively realized this, but until now could not actually prove it in fact. This, I hope, will make the all difference.

[/ QUOTE ]
I believe that this will make no difference. There are many skillful decisions made on hands that end on the river with more than one opponent. And there are many hands decided by sheer luck in which all but one player fold or muck their cards before or on the river.

A skillful play may involve calling through the river because of the odds received on each street. And yet these hands would be declared "luck" hands in your system.

What your defense does not consider is how skillful or unskillful decisions are affected by luck. And luck can occur on any street. It is the skillful player that can determine what is going on not only by the cards that have been dealt and the applied odds, but by his opponents reaction to them and/or betting patterns. Skillful decisions are those that will minimize losses and maximize gains regardless of whether a hand goes to the river or not, and regardless of one individual outcome.

By your logic a player should consider himself unlucky if he called down every bet and went to the river on every hand. I would call that an extremely unskilled player who loses money not because luck is involved but because his oppponents are consistently playing hands that are better and folding hands that are worse. Similarly you would consider that skill determined hands in which a player who raises at every single opportunity wins a hand because his opponent folded. While this type of player will win more pots than he loses, he will lose substantial amounts of money on all hands that his opponents have called to the river. These hands which you would label as determined by luck are actually skewed heavily to skill by the fact that the opponents played their better hands to the river knowing their opponent held random cards.

What your argument denies by not addressing it, is the underlying logic that poker players apply as to how luck has affected their game. For the better players who win consistently over time, it is not an issue of whether or not we get called on the river. In fact often we make value bets on the river or induce bluffs, precisely because we know we are ahead. The question for winning players is how badly luck will affect their winnings over the short term. The short term can be one hand, one session, a week, a month, or even a year. But there is some number of hands at which the probability of luck being the determining factor in a player's losing is astronomically infinitesimal. And over that number of hands you will see winning players win because of skill and losing players lose because of a lack of skill. This is the argument that stands a chance in court. And this is the argument that I believe will lose in court because in the short term to paraphrase Ed Miller "Poker is a gamble".

Good luck with your Rodney King police officer defense though. I hope you get a chance and win. Be careful though during jury selection to eliminate all potential jurors who know anything about poker or math.

[Skallagrim]

Did you read my whole proof Mr. Rick? In the proof I consider how to account for skill in hands that do go all the way to the river. Its just that hands that dont get shown down MUST be considered "not determined by the cards." That is only the base figure for the argument, not the whole of it. The online stats show this number to be above 50%, so even without the more complex analysis of hands that do go to the river, more than half are not "determined by the cards" but "determined by the decisions" of the players.

Since you know a lot about math, explain how luck must be the more important factor in a small sample, but by merely increasing the size of the sample to long term, all of a sudden skill becomes the more important factor. This is what caused the NC court to rule poker a game of chance.

And also, try and find the threads in the legislation forum that distinguish between "skill in the game" and "skill of an individual player."

Your observations are correct, its just that they fail to see a distinction between "acts of skill" and the "edge" a player with better skill has (and of course edge is only going to really manifest itself over the long term - but that doesnt mean that the "acts of skill" made along the way are the less important factor in the game). Its the acts of skill that the courts will consider, not any individuals players expected advantage or edge.

Skallagrim

[TMTTR]

[ QUOTE ]
Did you read my whole proof Mr. Rick? In the proof I consider how to account for skill in hands that do go all the way to the river. Its just that hands that dont get shown down MUST be considered "not determined by the cards."

[/ QUOTE ]

I am back from my first short vacation and I need to disagree with this strongly. Of course, it depends on the game and the hands involved, but often it is correct to call to the river and fold on the river solely based on the cards you are playing. I am too tired to start running out examples, but showdown vs. no showdown says very little to me about whether a hand was decided by "chance" or "skill."

OK -- maybe one example. In any hold'em game, we are three handed to the river and I make my nut flush on the last card. I bet out and the other two fold. The other two players missed their draws and there is no value in calling. How is that hand decided on skill?

[jjshabado]

[ QUOTE ]

OK -- maybe one example. In any hold'em game, we are three handed to the river and I make my nut flush on the last card. I bet out and the other two fold. The other two players missed their draws and there is no value in calling. How is that hand decided on skill?

[/ QUOTE ]

You can make an argument that there is skill involved in that two people knew to fold because they have Poker Skills and know that its likely you have a flush, and a flush > two pair (or whatever).

But you're right and this is the problem with the "proof", clearly there is luck involved in this hand. Its pure luck on if you make your flush or not which makes the difference between winning or folding on the river and having two other players go to showdown. Skall would have you believe that a hand that doesn't have a showdown is 100% skill, which is just complete nonsense.

I'm pretty sure you could construct an equivalent argument that would show blackjack is mostly skill.

[Skallagrim]

No, what Skall would have you believe is that a hand that doesnt have a showdown IS NOT DECIDED BY THE CARDS. How can you deny that? A player could be bluffing, a player could could have hit his hand, but the fact that the other 2 players folded means that the cards did not DECIDE the hand, the decisions made by the players decided that hand, even if their decisions were (as is clearly the case in this example) INFLUENCED by the cards.

You are getting too overly complex for a court if you try to quantify every possible factor in making a decision, and then try and determine how much of a factor the actual cards were in making that decision. It is cleaner and logically correct to separate hands decided by the players' actions and hands decided by the cards.

Please remember that this proof was not devised to teach people the correct or most profitable way to play. Your playing that flush draw to the river was maybe a +EV play or a -EV play, depending on things that you havent specified. Yet the basic point remains the same, if people fold to one player, the cards are only part of the equation, the material part of the outcome was the decisions. A factor that can never be quantified unless you know every card held by every player (and what they were thinking), something which you obviously only get to do in these made up examples, not in live play.

Since it is virtualy impossible to quantify how much the cards make a difference in actual play where the cards are not known, hands decided by folding are simply better and more correctly viewed as hands decided by the players, not the cards.

And finally, acts of skill are different from making the correct decision. Lets use a golf example: a player with no experience gets up and having no idea what he is doing swings and hits a shot that (miraculously) lands 2 feet from the hole. A player with a lot of experience (and a +8 habdicap) plans and swings but misjudges and hits a bunker. Was that luck or the actions of the players that decided who hit the better shot? Clearly it was the actions, even if one players "good" action was (as we know because of how we set up the example) purely luck that he will likely not repeat without a lot of practice. The fact is that a player made a lucky shot, but it wasnt luck that got him the better score, it was the "act of skill" that was his shot, even if his personal skill is completely lacking there.

Understand that last point and the value of the proof is clear: a decision (an act of skill) is separate from the factors that influenced that decision when trying to decide whether it was the decision or the cards (chance) that DETERMINED the outcome of a hand.

Skallagrim

[Skallagrim]

Let me give a concrete example of the distinction I am trying to draw: You are dealt 2-7os in any position at a full table. You fold. Since you folded you lost. Did the cards determine that loss or was it your decision (based on the cards)? Does your answer change if we rabbit hunt and discover that the flop would have been 777? Does your answer change if we now say that everyone else but one player would have folded, and that player had AhJh, but that (exceptionally tight) player would have folded when you bluffed by betting on a flop of As6d10c? How would your answer change if we presume that everyone else would have folded to the BB who held 2-6os?

Cards influence decisions, of course, but influence is not the same as determine. I respectfully suggest that the major value of my proof is that it does not require us to measure influence, a virtually impossible task that all judges would shrink from at first blush.

Skallagrim

[jjshabado]

[ QUOTE ]
No, what Skall would have you believe is that a hand that doesnt have a showdown IS NOT DECIDED BY THE CARDS. How can you deny that? A player could be bluffing, a player could could have hit his hand, but the fact that the other 2 players folded means that the cards did not DECIDE the hand, the decisions made by the players decided that hand, even if their decisions were (as is clearly the case in this example) INFLUENCED by the cards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your whole argument is that if a hand wins without a showdown the cards were irrelevant and thus it was an act of skill that decided the hand. That sounds all nice, and you can claim that its an elegant and simple 'proof', that blah blah blah... but its not true. Its simple because you're ignoring the fact that the cards influence the outcome to a large degree. Obviously, you're right a non-showdown hand has at least some skill involved. But you've said nothing about the ratio.

You say that judges won't be interested in trying to determine what the ratio of skill:luck is in the hand, but without knowing that your 'proof' is useless. The law you quoted awhile ago even mentions that skill may be involved.

[philgazi]

things will get raided, [censored] happens. It is not that big a deal, the places make so much money they can take it. pay the fine do the time, new places will pop up. It IS just a blip and not real news, one of a million things police do. Players do not even get in trouble. You take 2 or 3 highly publicized busts over the last 10 years or so and makes people scared.
It didnt make much news, I am new to the NYC area and have just been reading up on it over the last few weeks while trying to find places to play.
Law wont change, things will stay the same and be not so bad.

as of now I would be happy with some "home" games where you can gamble but there is no hour charge or "profit" to a place. from what I read that is legal and so should be open and posted , etc.
any info would be helpfull.

[punkass]

[ QUOTE ]
It IS just a blip and not real news....It didnt make much news,

[/ QUOTE ]

NY Times

not cover story, but it is getting news. ARod certainly didn't do us any favors.