The long and continuing legal debate over whether the game of poker is one of skill or chance arrived in a British court this week when an appeal by the private Gutshot Poker Club to have the game classified by the courts as one of skill, thus removing the necessity for a gambling license. How many times have we been in this same movie?
This time the debate took a negative turn when the British appeals court declared for the “chance” school of thought. Gutshot, which operates popular online poker room and community Gutshot.com, opened a brick-and-mortar facility in 2004 to complement its online business. The local authorities promptly shut it down and charged Gutshot with operating a land-based poker room without a license on grounds that it was offering a “game of chance”.

The owners of Gutshot fought the prosecution by arguing that poker was a game of skill, and therefore not prohibited under the 1968 Gaming Act. At the original trial, American business law professor Joe Kelly testified that “poker is overwhelmingly a game of skill.”

So when Gutshot lost the case, they took it to the appeal court where it was ruled that poker “contains a significant element of chance, and is therefore prohibited.”

Posted on: March 1, 2008

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