Poker deregulation is no bluff

A guy holding a 4 and 7 draws three cards in a poker game, successfully betting he’ll pull an inside straight flush. Skill or luck?

Dumb luck for an unskilled player, according to experts, but that randomness does not take away from the growing view that poker is a game requiring a high level of skill to be successful. A bill before the Legislature would make Massachusetts the first state to declare poker a game of skill and remove it from the regulations surrounding games of chance.

“I come at it from a vantage as a teacher. I want to teach my students how to handle aggression and the will to win,” says Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, an avid poker player and founder of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. “Not to recognize it as a teaching instrument seems dumb to me and inconsistent with Massachusetts historic ideals.”

The bill, sponsored by retiring state Rep. Brian Wallace (D-South Boston), would allow “peer to peer” games without limitations. While supporters say it will decriminalize private games and expand participation as a thought-provoking recreational activity, some see it as an opening to unregulated poker parlors around the state.

Edgar Dworsky, a former state consumer protection official and an expert on the gaming law the poker bill would amend, is unfamiliar with the measure but says it sounds like a Trojan horse for off-shore gambling and Internet poker sites to set up shop in the Bay State.

“I don’t see this as allowing it, but it’s the first step of a slippery slope,” says Dworsky.