Skill
I dropped out of school in the 9th grade, when I was 14. (I later went back, finished high school, got a couple of graduate degrees).
When I quit school my grandfather gave me a job. He managed Eagle Rock Ranch, outside of Wimberley, Texas. It has since become Woodcreek, a residential subdivision, but at the time it was a working ranch during much of the year and a Resort Ranch during the summer months. During the summer they employed college students as waiters, lifeguards, wranglers, etc. But during the off-season the employees were all full time cowboys and maintenance people. I was hired as part of the maintenance crew during the off-season, and part of the resort crew during the summer.
They had two separate barracks for cowboy housing -- one for Mexican cowboys and one for Anglos. (1963 Texas wasn't just a different time, it was a different place). I bunked with the Anglos. One night we went over to the Mexican bunkhouse for a crap game. I'd never played craps before but I knew the basic rules.
I also had a skill that nobody else in the game had -- I knew how to calculate the probabilities of various dice combinations and how to translate those probabilities into odds. Yes, I was a 9th grade dropout (which was what most of those cowboys were) but boredom had actually been a big part of my school problem. My grades had been bad but I read a lot, and liked math.
There was no host for the game. Shooters had the dice and shot until they either made a point or crapped out, then the dice passed. All bets were side bets, and all bets were at negotiated odds. That's right, there were no fixed prices for various propositions. We negotiated it. That gave me a pretty good edge. I actually knew the difference between the probability of making a point of 8 and that of making a point of 4.
The point of this story is to try to point out the nonsense that the idea that poker should be regulated rather than banned because it's a game of skill.
Well, that craps game I played in Wimberley, Texas in 1963 was a game of skill also. That didn't make it any less a gambling game.
And it gets really interesting when you think about what happens when you start regulating that crap game. Once you start regulating it, having a government agency overseeing a permanent host of the game, the negotiated odds go away and any edge I might have had from my skill is gone.
Regulation takes the skill completely out of that game.
That's what too much regulation will do to poker also. Regulation and taxes increase costs which causes increases in rake which reduces the value of any skill you might have.
When I quit school my grandfather gave me a job. He managed Eagle Rock Ranch, outside of Wimberley, Texas. It has since become Woodcreek, a residential subdivision, but at the time it was a working ranch during much of the year and a Resort Ranch during the summer months. During the summer they employed college students as waiters, lifeguards, wranglers, etc. But during the off-season the employees were all full time cowboys and maintenance people. I was hired as part of the maintenance crew during the off-season, and part of the resort crew during the summer.
They had two separate barracks for cowboy housing -- one for Mexican cowboys and one for Anglos. (1963 Texas wasn't just a different time, it was a different place). I bunked with the Anglos. One night we went over to the Mexican bunkhouse for a crap game. I'd never played craps before but I knew the basic rules.
I also had a skill that nobody else in the game had -- I knew how to calculate the probabilities of various dice combinations and how to translate those probabilities into odds. Yes, I was a 9th grade dropout (which was what most of those cowboys were) but boredom had actually been a big part of my school problem. My grades had been bad but I read a lot, and liked math.
There was no host for the game. Shooters had the dice and shot until they either made a point or crapped out, then the dice passed. All bets were side bets, and all bets were at negotiated odds. That's right, there were no fixed prices for various propositions. We negotiated it. That gave me a pretty good edge. I actually knew the difference between the probability of making a point of 8 and that of making a point of 4.
The point of this story is to try to point out the nonsense that the idea that poker should be regulated rather than banned because it's a game of skill.
Well, that craps game I played in Wimberley, Texas in 1963 was a game of skill also. That didn't make it any less a gambling game.
And it gets really interesting when you think about what happens when you start regulating that crap game. Once you start regulating it, having a government agency overseeing a permanent host of the game, the negotiated odds go away and any edge I might have had from my skill is gone.
Regulation takes the skill completely out of that game.
That's what too much regulation will do to poker also. Regulation and taxes increase costs which causes increases in rake which reduces the value of any skill you might have.
Labels: skill
posted by Gary Carson at 11:14 PM
6 Comments:
I understand why people want to beg to be allowed to play poker because it's a "skill game", and I appreciated Sklansky's hilarious, although bloated, joke piece about it, but if a grown person wants to throw his money down the fucking drain, he should be permitted to. It's incredible that in the "home of the free", people feel free to tell you what you can do with your hard-earned dollars, while in places with nanny states that would make Americans quail no one would dream of banning gambling.
So you played a version of craps that had skill? So what?
My friend and I once played blackjack against each other. We would have one up and one down, Then we would bet as to which of us would make the better bj hand. It was a skillful form of blackjack.
right now, the localities ban games of luck (where the outcome is primarily based on chance) and permit games of skill. So as long as the law makes the distinction, we had better learn to make it to.
DMW-
What locality are you talking about?
California used that distinction in the case of Bridge (not poker) in a court decision, not in a statute, and in that case the comment was about the social conventions that made Bridge a game of skill and not a gambling game, not any characteristic of the game itself.
Most state laws, including California's, don't make that kind of distinction anyway, making it a rather pointless attempt to distinguish.
The point of my post is that all games are "games of skill" if structured in that way. It's not an inherent characteristic of the game.
It's my guess you don't know what you're talking about.
That's funny. I posted my reasons on rgp not to long ago in a thread that I thought you were in. Massachusetts is the locality I looked at because that is the one that concerns me.
I just checked again. The root of the attorney general's opposition to poker tournaments is that poker is "game of chance" This is why skill games can be legally played for money and not poker.
I guess I'm right even if I don't.
There's a lot of threads on rgp I don't read.
Look up the law
http://www.gambling-law-us.com/State-Laws/Massachusetts/
It uses the term "game of skill" but does not define it. Which means your AG uses the term as a social term, not a legal term.
And by social construction poker is a gambling game, a game of chance, no matter who much skill you might think you have.
The law, btw, specifically exempts bridge, which is not socially considered gambling even when played for money.
You can holler and scream and argue all you want, but the public thinks that betting on the turn of a card is gambling and that's not going to change, not matter what you try to argue.
You don't know what you're talking about and you don't understand what the AG in Mass said.
Cute. You posted in the thread http://groups.google.com/group/rec.gambling.poker/browse_frm/thread/b2679452db39bd72/29cab4adce039b70?lnk=st&q=deadmoney+walking+chess&rnum=3#29cab4adce039b70 so I thought you might have read it.
The AG's argued that poker is a lottery citing a JUDICIAL OPINION that said a lottery is when "the element of chance rather than skill predominates." So legal systems can distinguish between them.
Post a Comment
<< Home