After The Wife had apparently listened to a news report on the radio on NPR, I soon after was relieved to know that in New York state… Poker is a game of skill. The rundown of the matter is that a federal judge decided that a guy wasn’t going to get in trouble for running a (what was thought to be) illegal poker room out of the back of his bike shop. The whole premise for him not getting in trouble was that fact that more knowledgeable players can indeed have better outcomes and win much more often. This makes poker a game of skill rather than gambling like pull tabs, slot machines, or other luck of the draw type of items.

How is this going to effect us? It’s probably not going to, but it could have wipe spread ramifications if many card games were determined not to be gambling, but rather games of skill. The odds are much more likely that this will be appealed and that someone other than this one off federal judge from New York is going to point out that you can indeed win with no skill what so ever bringing most if not all card games back into the realm of gambling.

Do you think a guy running a poker room out of the back of his place of work should get out of trouble because the law specifically forbids “gambling”? Do you see this more as an individuals point of view, or that this federal judge is interpreting the law the way the original writers would have intended?