Is poker gambling?

[JaredL]

Skall,

[ QUOTE ]

My personal opinion is "gambling" is wagering on future events subject to an element of chance and not under the wagerer's control or influence. That makes poker NOT gambling (of course we influence the outcome at poker), but that is just my opinion as to the best way to use the word gambling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting. Using this definition poker would indeed not be gambling and the obvious forms would be. The only thing it would exclude that most would consider gambling would be things like competitions. So if we're playing basketball, darts, bowling, playstation, or whatever and I bet you that I will win, most would consider that gambling but you wouldn't.

I personally would as well, though I could see not doing so.

edit: also office pools (March Madness, The Oscars, and so on) would be in some grey area - you aren't under control of which team/nominee actually win, but you win based on how accurately you pick them.

[Skallagrim]

Well Jared, by my proposed definition (which I have to admit I stole from the New Hamsphire Criminal Law definition of gambling) the first group you mention would not be gambling, and I think most people really dont consider it gambling when they bet $10 on which of them shoots the better score on the next round of golf. They consider it gambling when they bet on whether Tiger Woods or some other golfer shoots the best round at some pro tournament though.

But office pools and the like, thats gambling because although there may be some skill in making the right picks, you, unless you are somehow participating in the event, do not influence who gets the oscar, or wins the game, etc...

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]
Well Splawndarts, I guess you didnt have the time to provide the definitive statement on how much of poker is skill and how much chance. You should, being an expert witness is a lucrative profession.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't provide it, because it's been answered so many times before that there's nothing more to say. But if you really don't know, read a stats textbook, track the results of your individual poker hands (or sessions, if you want to cut down your book keeping), calculate the expected value & standard deviation, apply the central limit theorem, and the question is answered in the form of a normal distribution of what range of results you can expect for a given number of trials. The location of the mean of the distribution represents skill relative to your opponents minus vig, the width represents the impact of luck.

If you feel compelled to offer me a "lucrative profession" explaining the obvious to you, I guess I'm not going to stop you.

[Skallagrim]

No need to be demeaning - what you have proposed is a method of determining how much of any one person's results is due to chance v. skill. that may be obvious but it is also unimportant to any one other than that player. I thought the question was more theoretical (which it would be in any Court case), i.e. "how much of ALL poker results are due to a players actions and how much of ALL poker results are due to the cards?" Has anyone done that kind of analysis? I suspect it would be a pretty daunting task. Maybe the question is how much of an average players results are skill? But then we have to determine what is an average player.

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]
No need to be demeaning - what you have proposed is a method of determining how much of any one person's results is due to chance v. skill. that may be obvious but it is also unimportant to any one other than that player. I thought the question was more theoretical (which it would be in any Court case), i.e. "how much of ALL poker results are due to a players actions and how much of ALL poker results are due to the cards?"

[/ QUOTE ] In that case, you simply repeat the analysis for multiple people, and produce a distribution for their individual means and standard devs. Not to hard, but time consuming. However, in practice there's no need to do this - simply sample a small population, figure out the range of standard deviations for individual hands by player, and then figure that everyone's going to fall somewhere in that range.

[Skallagrim]

I think you would need to control for a few more variables then that to be sure you had a representative sample, but other wise a plausible equation. Are you aware of any one who has done this?

Oh and PS - telling me that the above method of analysis is "explaining the obvious" tells me you assuredly have all the hubris needed to be a good expert witness. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[rakemeplz]

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Read the first few chapters of Small Stakes Holdem. The definitive answer to your very question is answered there.

[/ QUOTE ]

No offence to Ed (and I love his book), I hardly think he definitively answers the question for every intelligent person on the planet. Although if you can say why it does I would like to hear it.

[Gonso]

Anyone here own a dictionary? This isn't that hard unless you make it hard.

[Jamma]

Maude Flanders: "Neddy doesn't believe in insurance, he considers it a form of gambling"

[monkover]

yes