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.