Colorado Court Declares Poker a Skill: 2


The professor from The University of Denver who came to the alleged professional gambler’s defense is the professor of Statistics Robert Hannum. Hannum has ran several experiments on the topic of online casino poker and why it is not a game of chance like most games found at online casinos. His research has been focused primarily on gaming models and their applications. One experiment in particular was when he programmed a computer to play a billion hands in a computer simulated poker game. The game was centered around two players in a heads up match. One of the players war programmed to play his cards at random while the other player was programmed to raise with a couple number of hands. The results showed that the player who chose his hands won an astonishing 97 percent of the time.

The findings from his simulated online casino heads up poker tournament proved to the jury in Colorado that poker was indeed a game of skill and not chance, like other games at online casinos. The director of the Poker Players Alliance for Colorado, Gary Reed, has recently said that this ruling is very positive for the alliance and that this will strengthen any of their cases that are in relation to this matter. In fact, in Pennsylvania a judge recently ruled that poker is a game of skill and not one of chance like once thought. The man who won his case was accused of running a no limit Texas Hold ‘Em game. The PPA chapter in Colorado now wants the legislature to change officially to declare poker a game of skill. Poker players would then have the same rights as people who play fantasy football.