Home / Poker News March 2013 / The Poker Grapevine – Virginia’s Skill-vs-Chance Controversy
The Poker Grapevine – Virginia’s Skill-vs-Chance Controversy
Posted by: Randy Williams - Mon, 2013-03-04 08:04
On Thursday, the stage was set for yet another skill versus chance confrontation on the issue of poker at the Virginia Supreme Court. The state has implemented a set of anti-gambling laws and measures in 2010, as a result of which several establishments offering poker and various gambling games were shut down. Among the establishments which fell victim to the state’s anti-gambling laws was the poker club of one Charles P. Daniels, who decided to fight the legal machine filing a lawsuit in circuit court, looking to have Virginia's anti-gambling laws overturned. His actions were met with tough resistance however, and the coup de grace was delivered by circuit Judge Thomas S. Shadrick who unlike several of his peers before him in other states, ruled that
Texas Hold’em was in fact a game of chance, given that the outcome of every single hand was determined by blind luck.
Naturally upset about the decision, Daniels took the next step and took his case in front of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's Thursday decision avoided taking sides in the skill versus chance controversy, after several math experts and poker pro Greg Raymer testified in the case. The ruling of the Supreme Court has pretty much nipped in the bud any potential future initiative to
legalize online poker in the state.
Charles P. Daniels was quite possibly emboldened by a precedent set by Federal Judge Jack Weinstein of New York last August, who ruled that poker was in fact a game of skill rather than one of chance, thus overturning the conviction of defendant Lawrence Dicristina, who had been running live No Limit Holdem games. Whether or not the skill versus chance debate has any sort of sway left over the issue of federally legalized online poker is quite unclear at this stage.
