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Backgammon NewsJanuary 30, 2009In Colorado, Poker is a Skill GamePoker and backgammon have many things in common. One of them is the difficulty to prove that despite the element of randomness, both games are games of skill and not games of chance. However, when Kevin Raley, a former poker club owner of Windsor, Colorado faced the judge for on professional gambling charges, he (actually his lawyer), chose a less arguable kind of game to prove this point: “Remember the Immaculate Reception?" [a legendary football game in which the then negligible Pittsburgh Steelers beat Oakland Raiders in the AFC divisional playoff and launched a victorious decade for the first time in 40 years – GammOnLine], declared Raley's attorney, "That was based partly on chance. But would anyone argue that football isn’t a contest of skill, speed, strength or endurance?” Supported by the testimony of an undercover CBI agent who admitted losing purposely, and with the help of a statistics professor who has been studying the subject of gaming modeling and applications at the University of Denver, the jury rejected the prosecution plea, stating that poker is a game of skill. Similar verdict was given by a Pennsylvania judge a week earlier. Both cases evoke a famous Oregon court decision of 1982, a milestone in the history of backgammon. In that case, a backgammon tournament director of Portland, Oregon who was charged of promoting gambling had convinced the judge that backgammon is not a game of chance, but a game of skill.
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