Poker? I Hardly Know ‘er!
Lots of states have anti-poker laws on the books because the government wants to protect you from unnecessarily losing your money to fruitless efforts in this day and age of economic uncertainty (cough GM! cough).
But a new dissection study on the elements of the game could reclassify it entirely and make all of those anti-poker gambling laws obsolete, according to New Scientist magazine.
The new studies show that the game’s average threshold of 1,000 hands show that skill determines the winner, not luck and therefore does not qualify it as an illegal form of gambling. Trying to get the law to reflect these findings? No such luck.
Computer scientists say that in order for judges and lawmakers to buy the findings, they have to be in a mathematical form that they can understand. I assume that means taking slowly and using giant flash cards with cartoon duckies on them.