http://blog.northjersey.com/meadowlandsmatters/5517/poker-group-backs-courts-game-of-skill-ruling/
The Poker Players Alliance last week filed an interesting 37-page amicus brief to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on New York.
The brief asks the higher court to affirm a federal court ruling from last August in the case of U.S. v Lawrence Dicristina, where Judge Jack Weinstein had to consider whether the defendant’s running of a Twxas Hold ‘Em poker room in Staten Island also left him running afoul of Congress’s Illegal Gambling Business Act. (see more on that ruling here)
At the core of the question was this fundamental question: Is poker a game of skill – or chance?
The simple answer is “both.” But Weinstein, in a 120-page ruling, wanted to get at whether whether poker results are “predominantly determined by chance.”:
Dicristina had been convicted last summer by a jury that had been instructed that poker does constitute gambling as defined by the IGBA. But after the conviction, the judge then heard the defendant’s appeal.
PPA attorneys backed the latest ruling in their brief, noting that the decision “constitutes the first federal opinion to thoroughly consider the nature of poker and whether it is appropriate to treat poker as gambling.” That could shape future rulings, the attorneys add.