Judge Says Poker Is A Game Of Skill, Not Chance -- Could Impact Legality Of Online Poker

from the skill-vs.-chance dept

While there's an effort underway to repeal the federal government's ban on online gambling, a recent legal ruling could help out a bit as well. A judge in South Carolina found that poker should be considered a game of skill, rather than a game of chance. Of course, in dealing with the state law at issue in that case, the result didn't matter -- as the law didn't distinguish between skill and chance. However, the rather murky set of federal laws that have been used to fight online gambling may not cover "games of skill." The problem is... well... no one's quite sure what it really covers. Basically, there's no real anti-gambling law. There are certain laws, like the Wire Act, that have been used against online gambling -- and the more recent law (oddly included as part of a harbor protection bill) was more focused on stopping financial institutions from accepting money used for gambling. But, with the judge's ruling, some are pointing out that this means online poker shouldn't be considered gambling -- and the other federal laws shouldn't apply (state laws are a different matter, however).

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Bodog Loses Another Round Of Patent Poker

from the try,-try-again? dept

You may remember last year that the popular online poker site Bodog.com was forced to change its name after losing a patent battle in Nevada, where the judge seized Bodog's domain name. The whole thing was pretty questionable. First of all, the patent itself is incredibly broad and could be used against any number of online sites. Secondly, why would a judge order that a company's domain name be taken in a patent dispute? The domain itself has nothing to do with the infringement. Of course, the ruling itself was mostly based on it being a default judgment: no one from Bodog showed up, pointing out that the site was not based in the US at all.

However, after losing, the folks at Bodog did file an appeal, arguing that it wasn't properly served and that it, as a Costa Rican company, is outside the jurisdiction of a Nevada court. The appeals court apparently disagrees and has affirmed the lower court's decision without issuing any opinion. The ruling still makes very little sense, but that's what happens when you don't show up in court when sued, unfortunately.

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Bill Moves Forward To Re-Legalize Online Poker

from the ante-up dept

Looks like having poker lobbyists setting poker tables at both presidential conventions this year was effective. A new bill is successfully moving its way through Congress that would effectively re-legalize online poker, reversing a law passed two years ago that made it illegal for financial institutions to accept payment for online gambling (all in the name of national security, of course).

Of course, the new legislation would also add some regulations to online gambling, banning wagers on sports -- though, of course carving out an exception for the time of sports gambling that politicians engage in: jai-lai, horse racing and dog racing -- which would remain legal). Rep. Barney Frank who introduced the bill, noted: "Adults are entitled to do with their money what they want to do." Of course, if that's the case, why can't they also wager on sports? Either way, considering the number of folks who have jumped through all sorts of hoops to continue playing poker online, this seems like a step in the right direction.

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Internet Poker Lobby Setting Up Tables At Both Conventions

from the upping-the-ante dept

The US's odd decision to effectively ban online poker as part of a national security law has never made much sense, other than as yet another paternalistic move by the government deciding what is and is not okay for you to do in the privacy of your own home. Some claim that the online poker ban is due to lobbyists from the offline casino industry, who don't like the competition -- but there's little evidence to support that. First of all, the offline casinos have talked about how they'd like to get into the online game themselves, but cannot due to this ban -- and it's quite likely that making games like poker more popular via online competitions would increase foot traffic to offline casinos as people who believe they've become experts online venture out to real world casinos.

Either way, it seems that the folks in favor of legalizing online poker are getting increasingly sophisticated in their lobbying efforts. Last year, they sent representatives to lobby in DC, and this year they're setting up actual poker games at both major party political conventions, trying to drive home the point that playing poker shouldn't be a crime. The article also notes that the lobbyists have started their own Political Action Committee as well, called PokerPAC, which has already raised some cash. Apparently, the poker players are getting serious about calling Congress' bluff on online poker.

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Poker Players Lobby Washington For The Right To Play With Real Money

from the full-house dept

Back in 2005, there were a few stories circulating about people funding their startups and college educations by playing online poker. The passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006 pretty much put an end to most of these plans. The act prohibits banks and credit card companies from processing online gambling transactions. However, even though the exact details of the law are still yet to be flushed out, banks are already blocking such transactions out of fear that they might fall under its prohibitions. So, while it is still legal to play poker online, players have to jump through hoops to fill their accounts with money, effectively crippling the entire online poker industry in the US. This week, the Poker Players Alliance, which represents 800,000 worldwide poker enthusiasts, marched on Washington with 100 of their members, including famous poker stars Howard Lederer, Chris Moneymaker, Annie Duke, and former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato. Poker enthusiasts argue that poker is a game of skill, and therefore, should not be banned under the gambling act. Not only do they think that poker should be allowed, poker enthusiasts go as far as to claim that poker is educational and aids in cognitive development. Well, whether or not poker is educational is still up for debate, but there's no doubt that online poker was big business in the US prior to the ban. And, with the lobby already spending $640,000 in the first six months of this year, they are betting big on getting back into the US market. Hopefully for them, it's not a sucker's bet.

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Humans Hold Their Own At Poker, For Now

from the one-last-redoubt dept

Score one for humanity. After four grueling sessions of human vs. computer poker, the human players managed to outlast and outwit the bot. It was by no means an easy task, as the computer performed strongly on day one. But, by the second day, the human players seemed to have a pretty good feel for the way the machine played the game, giving them the leg up. Assuming that computer, dubbed Polaris, represents the vanguard of AI poker, it would seem that it'll still going to be a long time before computers can compete at the top level, as they can do in chess. This particular match offered the computer optimal conditions, as it faced an opponent heads up in limit poker; in a no-limit game with a full table of opponents (conditions that would make it even harder to calculate proper strategy), its performance would have likely been significantly worse.

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Yes, But Can The Computer Keep A Poker Face?

from the deep-stack dept

Computers have been beating humans at chess for a long time now, and just recently a group of scientists announced that they had developed an invincible checkers computer. But getting a computer to excel at poker has been something of a challenge. Whereas in chess and checkers, all of the necessary information is available to the computer for it to compute, in poker the players are dealing with imperfect information. Thus, good poker players often rely on feel and intuition, which are weak spots for machines. But computers are getting better, and starting today, a new poker-playing computer will square off against two poker pros in a contest to determine whether this bastion of human superiority is bound to fall. The program's developers have come up with a clever method to minimize the role of luck, as the computer will play two separate games simultaneously against the pros. The exact same cards will be dealt in each game, but in one game, the human will receive the cards that the computer got in the other game, and vice versa. In the end, the winner will be determined by combining the humans' chips and comparing them to what the computer has. Obviously, one contest won't be enough to give a definitive answer on this question, but if the computer does well, it will indicate that certain traits, like intuition, can actually be programmed to some extent.

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