Tuesday November 8, former world champion Greg "Fossilman" Raymer appeared as a witness in a case of closure of live poker room in the State of Virginia. During this trial, one of the big questions that were asked were: poker, game of chance or skill game? News PokerCollectif regulars know that this question comes up often in the world of poker. Once more, we were going to attempt to demonstrate that poker is a game of skill. Although some courts say that poker is a game of strategy, there is still plenty of education to this side.
For information, Greg Raymer is a former lawyer, which surely gave him an additional baggage to try to convince his audience. The judge in this case (Thomas Shadrick) was clearly a neophyte of the game. This is the Poker Player Alliance, which sought the presence of Raymer in this case to plead in favour of Charles Daniels, owner of the poker room in Portsmouth which was closed in 2010 by the Attorney for the city, Earle Mobley. The reason? Gambling, of course.
The purpose of Daniel in this story was to prove to the judge that poker is not a game of chance like any other and that it includes a lot of strategy and that therefore its poker room should not have be closed due to "gambling".
Greg Raymer has attempted 15 minutes of time to explain to his audience that were of poker a game of strategy. Its presentation as a video strategy placed emphasis on the fact that good players will be able to decode the body their opponent's language, they'll be able to calculate the probability of hitting a draw and that they will be able better than their opponent to decode the strategy of the other players at the table. It also focused on the fact that the good player will do less technical errors that the poorer players.
The judge's final decision will unfortunately not go in favour of Daniel. According to the judge, poker course includes elements of strategy, but every shot remains unpredictable, and therefore, it remains a game of gambling. This decision is obviously amazing. Is this to say that chess is a game of gambling since the coup following my opponent remains unknown? One could also think of Black Jack. I do not know if the dealer of the casino will win the next hand or whether or not it will make a Black Jack, but I remain convinced that over 1 million of hands, it will be a winning player. It's also frustrating knowing that the poker room of Charles Daniel had made several donations to charities in the past months.
After this decision by the judge, Daniel has not commented on whether or not it would cause on appeal.
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