In Colorado, a man who was determined to prove this, was recently found not guilty on charges of professional gambling. The jury stated the prosecution failed to prove that poker was not a game of skill. Poker players are delighted with the new ammunition to their debate – poker is a game of skill.

“Poker players have to work together as a group on this," said Kevin Raley, the man charged and tried. 
Testimony was given during the defense by Robert Hannum, professor of statistics from the University of Denver and the author of "Practical Casino Math" who has done a great deal of research on gaming modeling and applications. Hannum is the man who once ran a billion poker hands in a simulation with two players in a heads-up match. He programmed one player to play his cards randomly, and the other to raise with a certain number of select hands. The player selecting his hands and raising with them won 97 percent of the hands. This was used to give the jury a reason to see poker as a skillful pass time.

The director of the Colorado chapter of the Poker Players Alliance said the verdict will help the cause of the alliance. Last week, a Pennsylvania judge also ruled that poker was a game of skill, freeing a man who ran a small no-limit Hold’em game.
The Colorado chapter would like to see poker declared as a game of skill, a change in the law. The alliance too would like to see poker defined as a game of skill. This is a change that would offer poker to people similar to fantasy football and games such as solitaire for money.
To those who like to play online poker the declaration that poker is a game of skill, and requires skill, comes as no surprise.

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