Poker is the only casino game I’m interested in because you don’t play against the House. You compete against other players and rent a seat (either a tournament fee, cash game fee per hour, or the House takes a percentage of each pot.) All other casino games involve players competing against the House, where the odds always favor the House.
I think of poker as a math test + psychology. A game that requires a combination of intellectual and social intelligence. In other words, a game of skill. A game of imperfect information (as opposed to the perfect information available in chess), but a game of skill nonetheless.
This study seems to back my opinion.
It’s an interesting question, considering the government recently sued the major poker websites. The Department of Justice charged the sites with money laundering (of which they’re probably guilty- it’s illegal for banks to conduct transactions with poker websites so the poker websites misrepresented their business). But the motivation for the banking restrictions is the opinion that poker is not a game of skill, it’s a game of chance, and is therefore subject to gambling laws.
The authors of the study concluded…
The differences [results of top poker professionals compared to amateurs] are “far larger in magnitude than those observed in financial markets, where fees charged by the money managers viewed as being most talented can run as high as 3 percent of assets under management and 30 percent of annual returns.”
The results of the top poker professionals are more consistently positive than the top financial advisors on Wall Street. In other words, Wall Street is more of a casino than PokerStars. And yet the DOJ is pursuing the online poker sites, not the guys on Wall Street who wrecked our economy.
I had some money in my PokerStars account when the DOJ seized the domain name. I requested a cashout a week ago per an agreement between PokerStars and the DOJ. The money was deposited in my checking account yesterday. And when will Wall Street return our money?
This is not a rant so much as me expressing amusement at the alternate universe in which Wall Street resides.