This country’s laws are being ripped apart by judges such as this one. Poker is a card game where money is bet. How can this judge say this is not gambling? When money is bet, it is gambling, pure and simple. There will be much rhetoric about this one, but in the end, any sane person knows poker is gambling. This kinda reminds me of the lawyers who kept hammering the Supreme Court with that nonsense argument that the first amendment protects pornography. I am sure that the founding fathers did not spend months putting together an amendment to protect anything but political speech. Pornography is not political speech. It was a bad court decision. So is this one.
Money is bet daily in the stock market and a little goes to the house, money is bet daily in the lottery’s and a little goes to the house. I have more control and less risk playing poker than I do playing either of the above. I don’t gamble my money playing poker I just weigh whether or not I want to invest it.
It’s an interesting question. I don’t play poker, but have no problem with others doing so. But you single out the key point: it is a game that people wager on. They are wagering on themselves, but it’s still an unknown outcome with luck being a significant (if not singular) variable.
Is it against the law (as opposed to against the rules) for a professional athlete to bet on himself to win? I don’t know, but if it is, I think the same standard may apply to poker players. You could carve out poker by law, of course, but I don’t think you could say Phil Helmuth can gamble on himself in a game legally but Derek Jeter cannot.
Also, aren’t there negotiated pot settlements in poker, which would be kind of like tanking?
When the Founders wrote the 1st Amendment....duels were still legal.
I don’t think the fact that money changes hands is the issue. The real issue, from what I understand, is that some things are not considered “gambling” as long as all of the money taken in by the participants is paid out again. My understanding is that this is what makes your typical office football pools or NCAA tournament pools legal.