Yorky Pud

For many years there have been thousands of arguments over which players are better at poker, those who play cash games or those who participate in various tournament formats. No firm conclusion has ever been drawn, nor is it ever likely to as each format of poker requires a different skill-set, but the Swedish Supreme Court have thrown a real spanner in the works by saying that cash games are “pure random chance” but tournament poker needs skills to win!

This all came about because back in 2007 in the town of Grebbestad , Sweden, a €250 buy-in tournament called The European Poker Challenge was due to be held. It had attracted 670 players and would have seen €50,000 being awarded to the eventual winner. However, the tournament was raided by police soon after the Main Event started and four people were subsequently charged and convicted of breaking Swedish gaming laws. In Sweden the results of a game must have a high dependence of player skill when compared to random chance otherwise the game is deemed gambling and therefore illegal, punishable with a maximum of a four year jail term!

At the time of the men's arrest the Main Event was running along with a number of side events and a number of cash games. Two of the four men managed to be acquitted and the other two had their punishment reduced after they were able to convince an appeal court that tournament poker was in fact a game of skill. The Swedish Supreme Court agrees with this and Swedish Justice Göran Lamberth said, “We have found that the main tournament and its side tournaments were not random chance games but that skill does come into it.” Despite this he went on to reveal that the cash games that were taking place were in violation of Swedish gaming laws as there was no skill involved!

Due to the fact a player in a cash game can apparently play when they like, bet when and how much they like and leave the table at will makes the game one of “pure random chance.” It is believed this decision was reached because in cash games a player can win his first hand then leave the table and because luck has so much bearing on winning a single hand they have decided to say cash games are games of chance, a bizarre decision at best.

Whilst the decision has been met by mainly negative comments across various forums there are some that are happy with the fact skill in poker has been officially recognised at such a high level. Swedish nationals are glad they have realised skill has a part to play in poker but also happy that it has not been classified as a pure-skill game as it would become taxable!

This is also not the first time poker in Sweden has been a court case. The European Union was looking into the case of the Swedish government run poker site Svenska Spel as they believed it was in breach of monopoly laws but nothing has yet been settled and since then a number of countries have attempted to “ring fence” their poker players such as France and Italy.