Games are Determined by Players

April 12, 2009

Quite often we have the feeling that we don’t have control over the cards that we get when playing poker, but we are simply relegated to what we have been dealt. What we do with that hand however, is entirely up to you. Yes there may be luck in what you get, but there is no luck involved once you play the hand.

However, PokerStars has just determined that poker games may not be what we thought they were. In fact, they could be the opposite. They have used scientific analysis of gambling data that has been compiled for online poker playing. They have come up with the theory that instead of the hand being luck and the rest skill that perhaps the poker cards that you are dealt are because of how you play.

In a sense they are saying that your poker playing determines the kind of cards that you get – and that it is not random. With this determination, it means that there is no luck involved at all. Rather the part that they thought was luck is as much skill driven as the rest of the poker game.

The poker site used a security company called Cigital to study more than 100 hands of poker and found that more than three fourths of all hands were over before the end – and this is with the players only seeing their cards and cards on the board. Those that went to showdown showed a tendency of half of them to be won by an inferior hand because the best hand had actually folded.

Therefore, only one in eight hands sees the game come down to the player with the “luckiest” cards flipping and raking. This means that the game is totally skill, not just partially. This will strengthen their assertions that poker should be legal because it is not a game of chance, and therefore should be exempted from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.