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Fighting The Good Fight


2007-10-23 15:03:39
By: Gene Bromberg

Over the next two days the Poker Players Alliance and many of the biggest names in the game will be in Washington lobbying members of Congress. There are several bills making their way through Congress that would do away with the provisions of last year's Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, and the PPA is making their case in the hopes of getting online gaming regulated instead of banned by the government.

If you want a glimpse at the quality of thinking that opponents of online poker have to offer, one need look no further than this quote from the USA Today story:

"It certainly has elements of skill," said Keith Whyte, executive director of The National Council on Problem Gambling, "but the predominant element has to be chance. Otherwise, it wouldn't be gambling."

So there's skill in poker...but chance has to be more important than skill...because otherwise poker wouldn't be gambling. Nice roundabout thinking there. I would like to congratulate Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, and Johnny Chan on being three of the luckiest people on Earth. And to all the big cash-game players who inexplicably win month after month, year after year...congratulations! You were born under a lucky star, while the rest of us slog through life with the deck (literally) stacked against us.

There's a poll at the USA Today story that asks if poker is a game of skill, of chance, or some combination of the two. The leading vote-getter is that it's mostly a game of chance with some skill, followed closely by skill with some chance. The latter is in fact the correct answer, but I'm sure that most poker players who are long-term losers prefer to think that they're unlucky, not less skillful, and would vote accordingly. There's quite a bit of bias and self-delusion involved when poker players talk about how good (or how bad) they are.


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