Poker As a Game of Skill: Interview With Congressman Robert Wexler

“Robert Wexler is a Congressman from the 19th District in Florida who recently introduced what could be a very important piece of legislation for poker players. The Skill Game Protection Act seeks create a ‘carve out’ in the current legislative environment such that poker could be classified as a game of skill, and in turn citizens would be permitted to play poker on the Internet. Carve outs currently exist for things like horse racing, and lotteries on the internet, and the Skill Game Protection Act seeks to add poker to that list. We sat down with Congressman Wexler recently to get his views on the state of the union of poker on the hill.

Academic: Poker Pros to Face Off With Computer

“Poker champion Phil Laak has a good chance of winning when he sits down this week to play 2,000 hands of Texas Hold’em _ against a computer. It may be the last chance he gets. Computers have gotten a lot better at poker in recent years; they’re good enough now to challenge top professionals like Laak, who won the World Poker Tour invitational in 2004. But it’s only a matter of time before the machines take a commanding lead in the war for poker supremacy.

Just as they already have in backgammon, checkers and chess, computers are expected to surpass even the best human poker players within a decade. They can already beat virtually any amateur player.

Computers: Poker pros to challenge computer in mind-vs.-metal match

“If you think reading the poker faces of your buddies on Texas Hold’em night is tough, try calling the bluff of an opponent with no face at all.

A $50,000 showdown between a poker-playing computer and two of the world’s sharpest poker players will take place on Monday in Vancouver, and it’s anybody’s guess who will take the pot.

Mathematics: Best Poker Article In A Long Time

“I ran across a post the other day that I wanted to share. I was looking for an artile on odds on Wikipedia and came across Poker probability (Texas hold ‘em). It’s really an excellent work on how probability fits into the game of poker. It’s not exactly a page turner but if you can sit through a bit of math you should come away with an appreciation for some of the complexities of the game that often get overlooked in other poker articles/books.

One part I found amusing was the possible hand combinations you could be up against with 9 callers (more than 622 quintillion).”

Bill Rini (07/20/07)

Press Release: Poker Academy to Supply Software Platform for the First $50,000 Man Versus Machine Texas Holdem Poker Championship

“Poker Academy, the premier source for quality poker software (http://www.poker-academy.com), today announced it will supply the technological platform for the first $50,000 Man Versus Machine Texas Holdem Poker Championship, which will take place in Vancouver, Canada, in conjunction with the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), July 23 and 24 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Vancouver, B.C.

The $50,000 Man-Machine Texas Holdem Poker Championship will pit a poker-playing computer program developed at the University of Alberta against two top-level poker professionals in a controlled scientific experiment with real money on the line. Polaris, the reigning world champion computer poker program, will challenge Phil “The Unabomber” Laak and Ali Eslami…”

Poker Academy (07/18/07)

Legal: Danish Court Says Poker is Legal Since Skill Is Involved

“A municipal court in the suburb of Lyngby Denmark declared that poker is not merely a game of chance but also requires skill, and is therefore legitimate competition, reports the Copenhagen Post on the ruling made last Friday.

Vision quest: Blind player excels at World Series

“Hal Lubarsky stares down at the table as he is dealt his cards, a young guy in a baseball cap leans forward and whispers into his ear. Is this a friend on the rail, passing along a possible tell he noticed about another player, or just passing on words of encouragement? Is he stopping to say hello? Are they making dinner plans for later?

No, the young guy is telling him what cards he has been dealt, because Lubarsky is unable to see them for himself. He is blind, and he is playing in the main event at the World Series of Poker.

WSOP: Time to treat World Series of Poker as one of the great sporting events

“I’ve lost you. Shouldn’t this article be in the Features section? Or next to sudoku? Poker is clearly not a sport.

Why not? The sports desk dictionary (the cover and pages up to “Alabama” have fallen off due to overuse, so forgive me for not being able to tell the edition) defines “sport” as “an individual or group activity pursued for exercise or pleasure, often taking a competitive form”. Poker fits.

Other definitions might require a “sport” to involve physical exertion, which some would claim rules poker out. On the contrary, there are few sports that require the stamina, physically and mentally, necessary to beat 8000 poker players.”

The Herald (07/09/07)

Editorial: Your play – World Series of Poker or the lottery?

“Is poker really just chance?

As Newsday reported last week, Shankar Pillai, a college student from Commack, won the $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em event on June 19 at this year’s World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

Academic: Success in Poker – How much of it is luck? How much of it is skill?

“Since the Main Event of the 2007 World Series of Poker is coming up in a matter of days, I found an article I came across in the July 2007 issue of Bluff magazine written by Aaron Brown and Brandon Adams that combined quantitative social science with poker to be extremely interesting. Aaron Brown, a financial trader and poker aficionado, has written a book about the intersection between poker and finance: The Poker Face of Wall Street. Brandon Adams has written a couple of books dealing with similar themes: Broke: A Poker Novel and The Story of Behavioral Finance.

What was interesting to me about their article, Luck and Skill in Poker, is that they came up with a way to quantify the extent to which luck (and skill) contribute to success in poker. They took the pre-tournament betting odds posted on Betfair.com of various professional poker players for the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.”

The Econophysics Blog (07/03/07)