NEW YORK COURT TOLD POKER IS SKILL GAME

The debate over poker’s status as a skill game surfaced in a New York courtroom this week, when an expert witness said poker was a skill game, in the defence of a man accused of illegal gambling.

The case, which was heard in a Brooklyn Federal Court, centred on the defendant Lawrence DiChristina, who stands accused of running an illegal poker game on Staten Island, which attracted high stakes players from across New York and New Jersey.DiChristina’s defence attorney, Kannan Sandaram, called on Randal Heeb, formerly of Yale University and France’s INSEAD Business School, to explain how playing poker for money does not constitute illegal gambling.

Quoting analysis from “vast amounts of data” Heeb claimed to have sided with the consensus among the poker community that players rely on skill and ability to success.

“Skill predominates over chance in poker,” Heeb said.

As an article in the New York Post reported, Heeb’s convictions follow analysis of 415 million hands of Texas hold’em, which he used to determine that “skilful players are overwhelmingly more likely to win… than unskilful players.”

Heeb added that poker is now central to researchers developing artificial intelligence, and is of further value in the classroom, where Heeb formerly used poker to teach graduate students at Yale School of Management.

Ultimately, the case will go down to the decision of Judge Jack Weinstein, who while believing it to be an “interesting question” will be bound by the law, one that he believed the law included playing poker for money in the Illegal Gambling Business Act.

“It may be that Congress was embarrassed and put poker in because they were all playing it,” Weinstein said, to the amusement of the court room.
Read the full story in the New York Post.