Myths about UIGEA from "semi-pro"

[tangled]

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Well, I didnt agree with everything in this article, especially the part about poker not being a game of skill under legal definitions/Dominant factor test. Just because a poker hand CAN be decided by chance does not mean that chance is the Dominant factor in the game - that ignores bluffing and inducing folds, for example which are the far more common way in which a hand is resolved.

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Well you should probably read several experts on gaming law. I am not a lawyer and did not make that part up. Some of the most respected minds in gaming law will tell you that there's a difference between a game being mostly skill and being predominately a game a skill. And if you don't understand that distinction you should invest the 10 minutes it would take to educate yourself. I'm not talking wild stuff here. I took this opinion from some of the most respected legal minds on the subject.

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What your simple-minded, follow-the-leader approach does not take into consideration is that a hand of poker is not over when the pot is pushed. It goes on. People act differently based on how they are doing and how luck is treating them. Lucky players will often take the wrong conclusion from their good beats and play poorly into the future because they remember the times when they won more than the times they lost. Players who have just recently suffered a bad beat may go on tilt and play erractically, or at least play the coming hands more tentively then they should as a defense to more lucklessness. Every hand in poker is tinged by past hands and, inexorably, colors future hands. And this does not change no matter how many times flawed, tortured legal drivel is regurgitated. Learning to think for oneself, not rote memorization, is the portal to understanding.

The strong element of luck in poker actually increases the skill of the game, not diminishes it; because, in addition to tactical considerstions (pot odds, pot equity, interpreting betting patterns etc.), other considerations come into play, such as patience, bankroll management and fidelity to proper poker theory. Luck provides one more obstacle for the skilled to overcome that does not exist in, say, chess.

Poker also involves the skills of understanding human behavior and the ability to provoke certain human reactions that many more accepted games of skill, like chess, just don't have to deal with.

Skill in poker reticulates all through the fabric of a skilled players being. Skill in chess only exists on one level - the immediate tactical considerations.

In poker, in both the short and long term, skill dominates.

[Billman]

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In poker, in both the short and long term, skill dominates.

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Cool your shorts there sparky. I didn't say I agreed with it. I said that that was the test used in most states.

[Uglyowl]

Enough with the insults. Although most of us do not agree with (or want to agree with) Bill, it is nice that he made his points and backed them up with reasons.

More thoughts (prohibition):

Most industries in the United States are moving away from a brick & mortar business model to the internet.

Banking, shopping, music, movies, etc. Some industries it is easier than others, and it seems poker is on the top of the list in ease to conversion to an internet model.

As the percentage of Americans that are internet savvy and have a demand for the online version of industry (including poker) I think that will be hard to suppress.

Bill claimed that without internet poker, there are other options (casinos, card clubs, etc.), but I think poker is a different beast online vs. B&M and cannot be considered interchangeable. In other words, if online poker was deemed illegal, most people would not consider B&M as a complete replacement and this will become more apparent as time goes on.

[Billman]

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Bill claimed that without internet poker, there are other options (casinos, card clubs, etc.), but I think poker is a different beast online vs. B&M and cannot be considered interchangeable. In other words, if online poker was deemed illegal, most people would not consider B&M as a complete replacement and this will become more apparent as time goes on.

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It depends on who those people are. No offense, but you and I are not the guys I'm talking about and we don't make up the majority on most sites. :-) The guy who's calling you down on a one outer is probably the same guy who would be just as happy slinging chips with his buddy over brews in his own living room. I have plenty of friends who play online but they would never alter their lifestyle in any way to continue to play online. They wouldn't jump through hoops or set up proxy servers to play. And these are pretty good card players but they view it as a challenging hobby, not a way of life.

All I meant to convey there is that there are alternatives to playing poker online. People who throw out the prohibition argument normally try to equate everything that happened with booze to online poker. Hey, they banned booze and more people drank! Well booze and poker are not the same thing so drawing similar conclusions from different events is what I was calling the myth. Things get banned all the time but very seldom do massive undreground markets spring up.

And remember, most of what I say isn't an all encompasing statement. Like the guy in the previous post telling me how narrow minded I am for pointing out the criteria most states use in determining whether a game is a skill game or not. I believe that poker is a skill game (either that or I've been on a 7 year rush) but I can't just throw facts out the window because I don't like what the government is doing. That's how they view things. You can either change how they view things or accept that fact that they don't view poker as a skill game. Anything else is wasting electrons.

So when I make a statement that equating the UIGEA with prohibition is a myth, I'm not saying that there zero simularities. I'm saying that it's not a good analogy. Too many factors are different for it to be a good analogy. When I say that many players will be just as happy going down to The Bike on a Sat night as they were logging in and donking off chips on Full Tilt doesn't mean I believe 100% of online players are going to go B&M. I just think a good chunk of people might.

[tangled]

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In poker, in both the short and long term, skill dominates.

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Cool your shorts there sparky. I didn't say I agreed with it. I said that that was the test used in most states.

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Rereading your exact words, and applying a Clintonesque, depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-the-word-is-is logic, then yes you didn't, technically, endorse this foolishness. But the implication is there, and stains deeply your paragraphs like brown betadine on too-old bandages.

What you did do - what I am sure you did - is try to educate your reader on this subject using only the opinions of "some of the most respected legal minds on the subject", but did not bother to try to impeach their opinions in any way. You even labeled your assertions under the "fact" heading. And when one poster questioned you, you, like a scowling school marm, scolded him with: "And if you don't understand that distinction you should invest the 10 minutes it would take to educate yourself."

You needed to be effectively called on this. And you were.

Your welcome.

[Petomane]

"When I say that many players will be just as happy going down to The Bike on a Sat night as they were logging in and donking off chips on Full Tilt doesn't mean I believe 100% of online players are going to go B&M. I just think a good chunk of people might".

Speculative posts like this one serve no purpose. I live in Vegas and wild horses couldn't drag me to a casino poker room. Most people don't have easy access to a card room anyway. And if they did, they'd be appalled at just how deadly slow the games really are.

You're not understanding that online poker is a completely different game requiring a whole new mindset... and vice versa. As Sklansky said, online poker is a different art form.

I have a card room right across the street and it's such a poor substitute for the real thing, it ain't worth my time. If you've studied your PokerTracker you should now that those 30,000 hand staying-in-place/losing streaks can't be overcome live, but they can online.

If anything, the B&M experience will drive people away from poker permanently. If you don't believe me, come and see the huge, empty poker rooms in many Vegas casinos midweek. It ain't happening.

[Billman]

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If anything, the B&M experience will drive people away from poker permanently. If you don't believe me, come and see the huge, empty poker rooms in many Vegas casinos midweek. It ain't happening.

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Well then I'll invite you to come on out with me to The Bike, Commerce, HP, Hawaiian Gardens on any night of the week and see how full they are. When I first went into those places they were mostly regulars who had been coming to the same rooms for year. A few years later the place was filled with students from UCLA and USC trying to be the next hot shot poker player. A few years after that the ladies started showing up and a Friday or Sat night at a casino was *almost* as good as some nightclubs. :-)

Hey, I agree that most people don't like playing live. I don't. I get too bored. I only go when a buddy calls up and says he wants to go and I go just to hang with my buddy. The game is simply entertainment at that point.

Some people will go to card rooms. Some will host little poker parties with their friends. Some will quit playing. That's not really speculating, that's stating the obvious. The vast majority of people who currently play online are simply not going to go to the hassle to get around all this UIGEA. Where they end up is more or less pointless. I just threw that out there as one of the possible alternatives.

I mean, do you have any idea how skewed your thinking is? I don't mean that in a bad way but there are threads on this board about guys wanting to move to Argentina so they can keep playing. The fact you;re even on this message board puts you in the small group of players who might do what it takes to keep playng online.

[Billman]

tangled,

I know what I said. I said it. Yes, I did try to educate people on how many states have applied the luck vs. skill argument. I could have just as easily pointed to the recent Gutshot case in the UK where they ruled that poker was not a skill game.

Why would I make an effort to refute a fact? The fact is that many (if not all) use a standard by which poker is not considered a skill game. That was exactly the point I was making. Now you can agree or disagree with the methodology the states use but the fact that they use it is not something even open to debate.

I assume anybody smart enough to want to read my site already knows poker is a skill game over the long run. And I can assume that because I've said it countless times on my site. So the point was that despite what we all know about poker, the government doesn't agree. And since the government makes the laws that's a problem with the people who keep claiming that all that needs to happen is for someone to arrest Doyle and have Doyle prove it's a skill game in court. The government applies a different test.

If you want poker to be officially recognized as a skill game the standard by which it's compared to needs to change. No change, no skill game. You can keep posting until your fingers turn blue but I don't make the laws. so you're wasting your time.

Does it suck? Yes. Do I wish the gov would use a better standard? Yes. Do I think online poker should be illegal? No. Do I think poker is a skill game? Yes. But what I think doesn't matter. All I can do is hopefully educate people on why these skill game arguments are false hopes.

I think the problem you had was that I stated that the argument that poker was a skill game was a myth. I think if you actually read what my post was about you'll see that I was debunking arguments being put forth by people as to why the UIGEA doesn't apply to poker (hint, read the title of my post). I suppose I could have made it more clear but I didn't know it was going to be posted on 2+2 and most of the people who read my site know me well enough to know that I'm not that freakin stupid.

[Skallagrim]

Ok Bill, for the sake of poker, I will give this discussion a second chance. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

First, as to the Skill argument - there is not enough room here to cover every state, and there are a lot of different definitions out there. The most common defintion of a gambling game is one where "the outcome is predominantly subject to chance." Hence, if the outcome is predominantly subject to other factors, a game is not gambling. In poker, the decisions and acts of the players determine far more hand outcomes than does sheer chance. Most poker hands do not go to showdown, and of those that do, the majority are still subject to skill (i.e., getting your money in with the best). The suckouts do happen, but they are not the predominant factor in the game.

The following Courts have agreed with that opinion: Harris v. Missouri Gaming Com’n, 869 S.W.2d 58 (Mo. Sup. Ct. 1994). Bell Gardens Bicycle Club v. Dept. of Justice, 36 Cal.App.4th 717, 741 (2nd Dist. 1995). Col. Op. Att'y Gen., No. 93-5, 1993 WL 380757 (April 21, 1993). Ginsberg v. Centennial Turf Club, 251 P.2d 926, 929 (Colo.1952). State v. Coats, 74 P.2d 1102, 1106 (Or.1938) and State v. Barnett, 488 P.2d 255 (1971). There may be a few more. Not all courts have agreed: Indoor Recreation Enterprises, Inc. v. Douglas, 235 N.W.2d 398, 400-01 (Neb.1975).

I remain convinced that these days, with all the math and psychology and game theory experts out there writing about poker, it will not be that difficult to demonstrate that poker is a game of skill in those states where it matters and the courts have not addressed the issue.

Admittedly, it does not matter in some states that expressly declare poker gambing and thus usually illegal (Washington for example), or in states that prohibit games with ANY chance (Tennesee) or in states that prohibit betting money even on skill games (Vermont is one).

So playing poker is legal in some states at least. And thus PLAYING poker on the interent is ALSO legal in those states.

As to the regulation issue, while it is legal for states to outright prohibit any kind of gambling activity by its own citizens, it is not legal for them to require INTERSTATE/INTERNATIONAL online sites to be regulated in their state. This is so by the virtue of the Constitution's Commerce Clause which requires interstate commerce to be regulated only by the Feds. The Feds have passed no laws regarding poker (the Wire Act does not apply to poker).

And most state laws that prohibit running poker rooms/games for money were written long before the internet. They most often make possessing the table or machine illegal; sometimes they make it illegal to run such a game "in any public house" or something similar. Those statutes clearly DO NOT apply to the internet.

The importance of the above is that it ineveitably leads to the conclusion that the UIGEA does not prohibit the transfer of funds for playing poker from those states where poker is a game of skill and it is not specifically forbidden to play a game of skill for money on the interent. This is because the UIGEA does not, by virtue of its own language, expand upon what was unlawful gambling and what wasnt prior to the enactment of the UIGEA.

So Internet poker and funding it are not prohibited in ALL states, IMHO.

I am aware of Mr. Humphrey and he is a recognized expert (though very much on the conservative side of the issues). But other experts (like Nelson Rose) disagree with him. And you may note in his commentary that even Mr. Humphrey, knowing full well that some states call poker a skill game, did not say that it defintely wasnt. His analysis is also completely devoid of a discussion of the commerce clause, a huge oversight in my opinion.

So in those states where poker is a skill game (and thus not gambling) and where there is no specific internet prohibition, playing and funding onliine poker should be completely legal. A smart money transfer service will come along soon that will be limited to only these states and it will be near impossible, IMHO, for the DOJ to stop that one. For those of you who live in other states, start petitioning you legislature! Even if you do live in one of those good states, still join the PPA or a similar organization, and continue to urge support for your right to play in the great american skill game of poker. At least on that last point we can agree Bill, I hope.

Skallagrim

[JPFisher55]

Well stated Skallagrim.