This question is at the epicenter of a long debate about online poker. If poker is luck, then it will fall under the gambling laws. If poker is a game of skill, then such casino laws cannot regulate the game.
It seems that there are strong proponents for each view, creating a lively discussion on the Internet. This can have serious consequences as some people and companies may have to pay big fines if convicted of breaking gambling laws.
According to lawyer Jeff Philips, "the issue of whether skill or chance is the dominant factor in the game of poker has never been litigated with the presentation of evidence in the U.S."
Such legal issue depends on the State or country laws and definitions of gaming and gambling so that there may never be a universal answer.
Annie Duke makes a very interesting comment about skill in poker in her blog. She argues that it is possible to voluntarily lose at poker. Check-folding every hand is a strategy that is guaranteed to lose consistently.
The point is that it is impossible to lose on purpose at a game of pure chance. If you play a simple game of dice with two players, one player wins each time an even number comes up and the other player likewise for odd numbers. There is no way to lose on purpose, as luck is the only factor that can determine the loser (assuming fair dice).
This is a simple proof that poker is not a game of pure luck as the actions taken by the players have a real impact, unlike pure gambling games where their actions have no impact other than introducing additional randomness into the outcome.
Another salient comment comes from a blog post by silentarchimedes who argues that there are a lot of similarities between poker and stock investing.
In economics, speculation is the villain and investing the hero. Speculation is associated with gambling and is considered to be a non-productive activity, sometimes nearly harmful to the economy. Whereas investing is a noble endeavor requiring skill and intelligence and serving a high purpose, i.e. better capital allocation into the economy.
But how much gambling and how much skill is there for the average Joe when it comes to stock investing? The financial events of 2008 demonstrate that there was a tremendous amount of gambling involved in stock investing in recent years. Similarly to poker, stock investing involves both luck and skill.
Another simple argument is to observe that there are thousands of professional poker players. It is true that most are young and cannot attest of the long-term viability of poker as their only source of income. But take someone like Doyle Brunson who has been living off poker exclusively for the past five decades. Was he lucky fifty years in a row?
Another argument was developed by a Dutch Professor of Statistics who created a scale to rank games depending on how muck luck or skill is involved in every specific game.
His formula is skill = learning effect / (learning effect + chance effect), where learning effect is the difference between an optimum player and a beginner. Based on this scale from zero to one, poker scores 0.4 and ranks at the same level as chess.
[Edited by Lazza61]
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