Texas Holdem: a game of skill or by chance?

Is Texas Hold 'Em about the luck of the draw or the skill of the player? The question is being played out in courts around the country.

Lets say you are playing poker and you need 1 more diamond for a flush. The dealer turns a card, shows a diamond and you win the hand. Was that skill or by chance?

The answer is affecting the fates of people across the country accused of breaking anti-gambling laws - people of poker like Kevin Raley of Colorado.

Engineer Raley finds that the mathematics of poker come easily and hes pretty good at keeping a blank face. Reading other people is something hes better at today than he was 5 years ago.

He was arrested a year ago for running a $20 buy in Texas Hold 'Em tournament at a bar in Greeley, but acquitted by a jury. Raley hopes to convince the Colorado Supreme Court of what he says its true to anyone who really knows the game that poker is more on skill than chance.

Playing Texas Holdem Poker has exploded in popularity in recent years, with professional tournaments earning television coverage and fan followings for major players.

Generally, they tolerate poker as long as it's detained to games among friends in which no one makes a profit other than players. In Colorado, it is illegal to participate in a game in which rake is fee charged by the poker operator and taken.

It's also one of 37 states where a game of skill does not qualify as gambling, said Attorney Chuck Humphrey of Colorado, expert in gambling laws.

Raley argued that not only was poker a game of skill, but that his game had been among friends. Prosecutors maintained that it was neither.

A review of Raleys case last month, the judge said that poker is more on chance. A poker player may give himself a statistical advantage through skill or experience, but that player is always subject to defeat when the next card is turned, Weld County District Judge James Hartmann wrote.

Raley is petitioning the Colorado Supreme Court to compare on the question of skill versus luck.

Other recent contend include a South Carolina case in which 5 men were arrested in a 2006 raid on a game of Live Texas Holdem. They were convicted this year by a municipal court judge who said that he agreed that poker is a game of skill, but that he thought it wasn't clear whether that was connected under state law. The men are appealing their convictions.

In Columbia County, Pa., a judge ignore charges in January against a man accused of running a poker out of his garage, ruling that he hadn't committed a crime because when skill rules, it's not gambling.

But in a 2nd Pennsylvania case, a Westmoreland County jury last month rejected a mans contention that the Texas Holdem Tournament he hosted in local fire halls were legal because they were games of skill.

The recent spate of trials represents a (radical break with the way poker cases have been handled before) according to Professor I. Nelson Rose at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa and gaming industry consultant.

Unlike with previous trials about poker, Rose says defendants are receiving financial and legal support from groups such as the Washington Poker Players Alliance and judges are permitting comments about research concluding that poker depends on skill.

A central figure in other recent legal fights, including Raleys, is University of Denver statistics professor Bob Hannum, who studied gaming mathematics. In games of luck, it doesn't matter what you try to do, he said. You can be playing against a monkey, and the monkey will do just as well as you.

In poker, Hannum said. Numerous studies happened in recent years all indicate that skill ruled in poker game. In Texas Holdem Poker, there is 1 choice: Hold or fold. That is not necessarily a skill as much as just having guts or not. It is our position that this is gambling. There is a huge element of chance in the giving of cards, shared by Norton.

Do I enjoy sitting down with my friends and playing a little poker? Yes, he said. A private game of poker in a private home where the house is not taking a cut is not something I'm going to prosecute. But something I take very seriously is my oath to administer the law, as it exists.