RESEARCH INTO SKILL VS. CHANCE POKER DEBATE CONTINUES

10 April 2009

With three positive US court rulings in favour of skill, poker is ahead in the legalisation game at present
 

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation is facing legal claims of Cdn$ 3.5 million from a problem slots gambler who alleges that he has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to an ineffective "self exclusion" system in the organisation's responsible gambling program.

Reporting on the litigation, The Canadian Press revealed that player Peter Dennis's inability to stay away from the slots had terrible consequences for him and his family, but senior gaming officials say that blaming the "self-exclusion program" for his problems was both dangerous and misguided.

"What we find troubling is the belief that this program, when distorted to be something that it isn't, provides hope to real victims that somehow they have found a way not to be responsible for dealing with their own addiction," said Rob Moore, a senior vice-president with the gaming corporation. "It's quite dangerous and misleading to think that one could transfer the responsibility they have once they've confirmed they have an addiction onto a third party."

In his suit against the OLG, Dennis argues that gaming staff allowed him to keep gambling even though he had authorised them to deny him access to land casinos. Under the voluntary self-exclusion program problem gamblers can request that the province's gambling facilities use their "best efforts" to keep them out or remove them if they managed to circumvent exclusion measures.

Dennis's class action in the Ontario Superior Court claims that the OLG self exclusionary program was a sham that profited from the most vulnerable gamblers, allowing Dennis to blow some Cdn$ 350 000 between August 2000 and May 2004 on various slot machines. His health declined, and he became depressed and anxious.

After one 11-week, Cdn$ 59 000 binge, he signed a self-exclusion form at Woodbine Racetrack on May 23, 2004. Officials took his personal information and photograph.

However, his addiction to the slots got the better of him and he continued to frequent gaming facilities and gambling venues, leading to further Cdn$ 200 000 in losses.

Ultimately, lenders foreclosed on his two homes and he was fired from his job at a data-management company for failing to pay back money he borrowed from a client.

"Throughout the precipitous deterioration of the welfare of Dennis and his family members, the (OLG) enriched itself at the Dennis family's expense, contrary to its contractual obligations under the self-exclusion contract and other duties," the suit asserts.

Among other things, the suit alleges, the corporation was lax in allowing people on the exclusion list to enter casinos, failing to train staff properly to enforce the program, and not implementing technology to detect those who sought entry anyway.

About 12,000 people have signed onto the OLG self exclusionary program. Staff remove between 600 and 800 of those a year and the gaming corporation said it was experimenting with new technology to help better detect those on the exclusion list.

OLG spokesman Moore claimed in a statement this week that the exclusion program was never meant to turn gaming staff into detectives, but rather to allow addicted gamblers to take a self-help step by having them acknowledge their problem.

"To presume that this one program is designed as a policing program to keep people out is just wrong," Moore said. "It was not in its intent, design or its execution a commitment for us to exclude people or to stop people from coming into our facilities."

Moore added that the suit highlights the "real and tragic" circumstances associated with gambling addiction. "Bad things happen to people's lives when they lose control . The Poker Players Alliance has cautioned against complacency in the important skill vs. chance debate on poker - a critical element in working toward the legalisation of poker as a game of skill rather than chance, therefore placing it beyond the reach of anti-gambling laws.

The caution comes in the wake of favourable results from courts in Pennsylvania, Colorado and South Carolina that have all ruled this year that poker is a game of skill.

Nevertheless, practical research and findings based on fact remain important for the game, and this week ABC News discussed recent findings in an article at http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7270357&page=1.

Darse Billings, a former poker pro who co-founded the Computer Poker Research Group at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada has no doubts that it is skill and not chance that predominates in the game. "I depended solely on that skill for my food and rent," he told ABC News.

The aticle covers previous research efforts aimed at quantifying the relationship between skill and chance by building theoretical models or playing software bots against each other.

Ingo Fiedler and Jan-Philipp Rock at the University of Hamburg's Institute of Law and Economics in Germany argue that these methods fail to reflect real games, and this may explain why some courts and lawmakers have yet to be swayed by them.

Over three months, the pair recorded the outcomes of 55 000 online players playing millions of hands of poker's most popular variant, "no-limit Texas hold 'em", choosing two factors to define the threshold between skill and chance.

Firstly, they measured how much each player's winnings and losses fluctuated: the higher this variance, the greater the role of chance. Secondly, they measured the average value of a player's winnings or losses: highly skilled or terrible players would do noticeably better or worse than would be expected by chance alone.

Based on these factors, they found that the threshold at which the effects of skill start to dominate over chance is typically about 1 000 hands, equivalent to about 33 hours of playing in person or 13 hours online, where the rate of play is faster.

They suggest that their results show that skill dominates, because most players easily play this many hands in a lifetime, and poker is therefore more a game of skill.

Sean McCulloch, a computer scientist at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, has a different opinion, claiming that the results may fail to sway a judge or jury.

"If you want to use a mathematical argument as the basis for legislation or court decisions, it has to be easy to explain, easy to follow and intuitive," he says.

McCulloch used an alternative method to explore skill and chance in poker, also based on real games.

Together with Paco Hope of the software consultancy Cigital of Washington DC, he looked at 103 million hands of Texas hold 'em played at the PokerStars online site and calculated how many were won as the result of a "showdown" - in which players win thanks to their cards beating their opponents' cards - versus those that were won because all the other players folded.

They argue that the latter hands must be pure skill, because no one shows their cards. Their analysis, released on 27 March 2009, revealed that 76 percent of games did not end in a showdown, suggesting that skill is the dominant factor.

John Pappas of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) in Washington DC says both studies are badly needed to help properly define the law. In many US states, judges and juries use a so-called "predominance test" to gauge skill and chance, based on the opinions of expert witnesses.

Although courts in Pennsylvania, Colorado and South Carolina have all ruled this year that poker is a game of skill, not all courts do. "It would not be wise for any of us to rest on our laurels," Pappas says. The PPA expects the Cigital study will now be used as evidence to fight court cases.

Online Casino News Courtesy of Infopowa

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