On August 21 2012, a U.S. federal court asked that poker was a game of strategy and not of chance, which subtracts it to the legislation governing this kind of chance games.

In the United States, if the State courts took different positions on whether the game of poker is a game of chance or a game of strategy, this is the first time that a federal jurisdiction decides the issue by this judgment of August 21, 2012 ruled by Judge Jack Weinstein. The question is crucial for the Regulation of online gambling because gambling is regulated or even prohibited by State, but not strategy games. Qualification depends on the definition that is given in the game according to the judge, who relied on recent scientific studies, the gain in poker does not depend poker mostly luck but skill. Therefore, it escapes the regulations that surround gambling.

In law, intellectual operation of the "qualification" is the pivot. Indeed, it is a fact that brings in a legal category, what is attached to a legal regime.

Thus, in United States, the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA) establishes that gambling is prohibited or regulated. This is why a person had been prosecuted in that he organized private poker tournaments in New York.

But it is still necessary that poker is a "game of chance". If it is, the sentence is obvious. If it is not, the non-condemnation is necessary with the same simplicity.

So, the complexity of the case is in the qualification.

We measure otherwise than through the resolution of this only case, the whole edifice of the status of poker, giant industry, is at stake because if in this particular case, poker is not designated as a game of chance, then it is said to this case can be said for all other cases and all the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA) becomes applicable law (if one is in a system with previous law) or de facto (in a civil law system) inoperative.

This is why the Poker Player’s Alliance (PPA), an association which defends the interests of the poker industry is very active in this type of litigation in the sense of a subtraction of the activity to the ban, even regulation.

But how to know if poker is a game of chance or not?

The judge can know intuitively. Even reading Dostoïevski, it is difficult to measure only the elements of chance that contain some games compared to others. This is probably why so far no judgment had resolved the issue.

But scientific studies in this area as in others progressed. Indeed, it appeared, beyond intuition as well as the existence of "professional player" (pro) raises, the precision and focus are important factors for winning. Therefore, poker can be out of the legal category of "gambling" to be inserted into the legal category of "strategy game", with legal and economic consequences that follow.

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We first measure the importance of qualification, second is the influence of scientific studies on Regulation (here econometric studies showing recurrence of gains following the skill of the players who win more often than others).

But thirdly, we must return to the fundamentals of Regulation, considered as a set of legal mechanisms to serve a purpose, here the general interest and the interest of the player, more particularly away from an addictive activity in which it risk losing everything, to ruin, to enter into a spiral where the game is going to aspire not only him but also his family.

For this reason and in this light, poker is so different from roulette?

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On August 21 2012, a U.S. federal court asked that poker was a game of strategy and not of chance, which subtracts it to the legislation governing this kind of chance games.

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