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Skill vs. chance

I read an article at a poker news site recently about the discussion over whether you identify table poker as a game of skill or a game of chance. Regulars know poker is almost entirely a game of skill, so what does it really matter what it’s “labeled” by the outside world? See, I thought the same thing, until I considered some states will either allow it or deny it from being played commercially based on whether it’s a game of skill or chance.

This an age-old argument to be sure. And I’ve always fallen on the side of poker being a game of skill…with plenty of luck involved. Now you try explaining what that means to a state legislature run by guys who’ve only gotten close enough to a poker to table to smell the felt and hear the chips on their way to the back room of a strip club. I kid, and it seems in Massachussetts, the folks were actually somewhat receptive to the explanation. There was a proposed bill on the table to classify poker as a game of skill (why does Mass. get all the cool bills? All you see lately down in Florida is bills trying to tie teacher pay to student performance).

And while this may or may not cause massive ripples within the state, it would set a noticeable precedent for other states in our fine union, namely ones that’ve been on the fence for years regarding casinos. I’m not saying Illinois is still in that group, because I haven’t lived there for quite some time, but I remember vividly the heated discussions back 20 years ago or so about allowing casinos in the heart of Chicago. It fell away, but it kept swimming around the realm of possibility for about 3 years.

Back to the heart of the question, though, isn’t everything really a game of chance to some degree? Hell, driving down the expressway is a game of chance if you want to get technical. Major league sports bring in plenty of chance situations – will a ball ricochet a certain way off the wall or bounce poorly off the dirt…will a fan waving a flag behind the basket cause a player to miss a free-throw, you could go on forever.

That said, poker is definitely part chance/luck. Even the professionals on television will tell you they’ve gone down to somebody who wasn’t nearly as skilled as them, and it wasn’t a case of them having a bad day, either. A lucky card is sometimes the difference between a gold bracelet and a Phil Hellmuth lecture. And nobody’s lucky when one of those happens.