Poker as a skilled gambling game that involves wagering skill

[Lottery Larry]

I’ve started a separate thread because… it seemed a little different that the recent thread on “doing a paper on poker skill affecting returns” (my paraphrase) and I didn’t want this to potentially lose counter-arguments. Also, this post links several important threads on this general topic.
Berge20, feel free to move this back underneath that thread, if I inappropriately started this one.


This was started in the recent "poker as skill" thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=1#Post12753600

One of the later replies in the thread above came from a new poster, Kaka:

[ QUOTE ]
I have previously had difficulties articulating an argument that would differentiate poker from blackjack - as the decision to stand, hit, double, etc. seems inherently skillful to me.

Not that I have anything against blackjack, but Lederer's definitions would appear to make such distinction, as the vast majority of blackjack hands do go to showdown and involve comparing cards. Intuitively, then blackjack would be a game predominated by chance (the deal of the cards) and poker a game predominated by skill (the decision to exit a hand prior to showdown).

[/ QUOTE ]

This highlights something in the "poker vs. other gambling" argument that troubles me a bit…. well, a lot. I think that trying to argue the merits of poker as a ‘separate’, skilled form of gambling, based solely on the skill involved in the cards and the play of hands, may be doomed to failure… or, at least, less of a solid stance to build on.

(gambling= when an event combines payment, chance and consideration/value to be gained/lost, regardless of skill involved)


The problem with arguing on folding as a skill, as Howard (and Skallagrim) have in writings such as the one contained here: http://gpsts.org/poker-a-game-of-skill/
(for those not familiar with this link, page down to Howard Lederer’s article on that website)

… is that betting and the cost of playing is removed from the effects. If I want to make the most skillful “folding” decision in poker, I’d fold everything but AA and KK and don’t wager too strongly unless I quickly get trips or better. We all should know why this is an incredibly stupid plan, so I won’t talk about it further.

As David S postulated in this thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...part=1&vc=1

… there are a wide range of skilled decisions to be made in gambling games, with poker containing many more decisions that are not obvious, and therefore poker is more skillful.

Blackjack, it could be argued, can still be a +EV game long-term, for a skilled player, if appropriate rules are in place. I believe the ability of casinos to ban card counters is instinctively a sign, to most people, that this is true. In New Jersey at least, this has been addressed legally. Indeed, if card skill and betting were not a factor affecting long-term gambling success, why would casino rules and structures need to set and changed in the manner that they have been, over the years?

In my opinion, the skill of wagering is one that needs to be brought back into the argument. It is the combination of the two skills- skill at making card play decisions and skill at making betting decisions- that makes certain forms of gambling (blackjack, sports betting, horse betting, backgammon) candidates for a person to potentially and consistently earn a living at them. It is the combination of those skills that makes those skilled gambling games different from other gambling games (slots, War, etc) because skill can overcome the variance of "chance" or "luck", by a slim margin in the skilled gambling games.

And, it is the combination and manipulation of the two major gambling “skills” that sets poker in a class by itself, over all of them. At least, I can’t think of another game where the intertwining of the two skills, at every decision point in the game, affects the long-term outcome so greatly…. and long-term outcome is the only way imo for us to successfully argue that chance is NOT the predominant part of skill-based gambling games.

Blackjack, it could be argued, can still be a +EV game long-term, for a skilled player, if appropriate rules are in place. I believe the ability of casinos to ban card counters is instinctively a sign, to most people, that this is true. In New Jersey at least, this has been addressed legally. Indeed, if card skill and betting were not a factor affecting long-term gambling success, why would casino rules and structures need to set and changed in the manner that they have been, over the years?

However, I hold little faith that there is a chance in the world that we can ever get the general populace, or more importantly the legislative and judicial bodies in this country, to say that the presence of a significant skill factor makes a gambling game into an non-gambling game.

From the Tenn decision linked by Kaka:

[ QUOTE ]
Most courts apply a "dominant factor" test, under which a type of gambling is a lottery when chance dominates the distribution of prizes even though the exercise of some degree of skill, judgment or research is present

... But it is the character of the contest itself, the particular facts of the game itself, not the skill or lack of skill of an individual participant that determines whether the game is one of chance or skill


.. Games which have been deemed games of skill, rather than games of chance, are chess, checkers, bowling, baseball, archery, golf and spelling contests


.... The Rhode Island Supreme Court has advised:
The fundamental nature of such games (poker and blackjack) is chance-- A player's skill, no matter how good or bad, does not and cannot control the randomness inherent in the 'deal' of the cards. Stated another way, the skill of the player may increase the player's odds of winning but ultimately the player's skill cannot determine the outcome [LL emphasis], regardless of the degree of skill involved. Chance, being the nature of the determining factor of the game, dominates over skill [LL emphasis].

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a pretty solid statement against the effect of skill (as currently defined by the Tenn and RI courts), as it relates to the chance turn of cards in one hand, one hundred hands, or a year. It’s certainly an argument that tournament poker has a tough time overcoming, imo… and WSOP and WPT telecasts would seem to be irrefutable proof of that argument, at least to the general public.

If I’ve interpreted correctly, Skallagrim argued earlier that the main part of poker skill is determining results BEFORE the river card is reached: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...ue#Post10212566
As Skallagrim and others have previously noted, quantifying skill is the difficult part.. but I’m not sure if we have to exactly quantify it to a large degree?

I believe this, because I also believe that it will be nearly impossible to separate the card skill aspect of poker and quantify it convincingly enough to get others to agree that “yes, I think poker and other skilled wagering games ARE a different form of gambling and should be allowed”

I have said before that we should try to equate poker more closely to accepted forms of business, which share the gambling aspect of chance affecting outcome. Business start-ups, insurance companies, oil exploration, and stock market investing (day-trading being a very close analogy, imo) are all real-world models where chance plays a large role, even a primary role, in individual and short-term results.
However, long-term results can be skillfully managed. Outlier events can be somewhat planned for, bankrolled for, and overcome. Long swings of misfortune or “bad luck” can also be overcome and recovered from, returning businesses to their former financial standing.

None of the above (with day-trading the only possible exception) would be considered pure “chance gambling” by most people… and neither should poker. The high risk of failure in certain business ventures does not remove them from the business category, so why should the majority of losing poker players indicate that skill is an insignificant factor in our favorite gambling game?

Therefore, I do not think that the wagering-decision aspects of poker should be separated from the card-playing aspects. As we all know here, or should at least instinctively grasp, you earn a living at poker by broadly doing the following:

- Putting yourself into as many positive expectation situations as possible. This occurs on every street, every hand, every session, every month.
- Changing as many negative-expectation situations as you can, reducing their long-term effects, or removing yourself from those situations entirely.
- Maximizing the “profits” on each decision that you make (both the positive and negative profit decisions) for long-term bankroll growth


Poker is not about winning hands, or folding hands, or getting good cards. Poker is about maximizing profit, or reducing loss, at every decision point. If it weren’t, the game wouldn’t be primarily played for money.

If profit/loss wasn’t the primary goal of poker, then the effects of playing for fake chips wouldn’t change the play of the game, and the results of the game, as much as it does.

If making money, or not losing money, was not a central factor in the play of poker, then every card room would offer $2/4 limit hold’em, $1-5 stud and $5 tournaments with 5-20% uncapped vig, just like casinos do at most of their other gambling games.

More importantly, the pure act of wagering and the manner in which money is wagered affects the outcome of short-term hand results and long-term financial results. A losing hand can be turned into a winning one by check-raising and continuation betting a better hand out of a pot. A check-fold, or raise-fold, decision early in a hand can alter the short-term (pot-stuck) and long-term financial returns from poker, regardless of the cards involved or the bad run of cards that someone may be experiencing.

Additionally, if wagering skill did not have a significant effect on the long-term results of playing card games such as poker, then no one would be able to argue that no-limit is the most “skillful” version of poker… or that NLHE could require more skill than limit hold’em
[note that I am not making those specific “game X more skillful” arguments either]

I don’t think we can ever successfully separate “gambling” from poker, in the real world. I think we either need to create a new wagering term, to take its place… or show how poker gambling is similar enough to other forms of business gambling to make it “legitimate” enough to be declared legal.

Anyway, this is not put together well enough to be a solid/legal argument, because I don’t have the time now to completely tie this together and I don’t have data to back up my conjectures in a complete and precise way.
If we’re not beating a dead horse here, maybe some input from others would be beneficial.

Also, links to more threads that have argued this point better could be added, by those familiar with those information sources. For example, I didn’t find Skallagrim’s post, the one that was the foundation for Howard Lederer’s article linked above, in my quick search today.

Fire away!