Poker Ruled Game Of Chance by UK Jury in Landmark Case
Poker Ruled Game Of Chance by UK Jury in Landmark Case posted by: PokerLOG on 31 March 2007
The landmark UK case where poker was on trial ended yesterday and the Jury delivered their verdict: poker is a game of chance, not pure skill. So Derek Kelly, the manager of Gutshot a 23,000-member private card club in London, was convicted of violating Britain's gambling laws.
Kelly argued that he did not need a gambling license to take a share of profits from players because UK's Gaming Act 1968 applied to chance games like roulette, and not skill- based games like poker or chess.
So the jury was asked to decide whether the popular Texas Hold'em variant of poker is a game of skill or chance, or a combination of both.
For the past week, reporters, Kelly's competition and many other avid poker fans packed the courtroom in east London's Snaresbrook Crown Court listening to testimony from expert players about the skills needed to play poker.
Prosecutor Graham Trembath QC argued because a deck of cards was shuffled, that poker is both a game of significant chance as well as skill, a combination that the U.K. government classifies as chance.
Zeeshan Dhar, defending Kelly, told the jury that poker required such a level of skill that it did not fall within the remit of the Act.
He said: "If we accept that a game of chance includes all games of combined chance and skill every game you could possibly think of would fall foul of this particular Act."
UK Poker clubs bars and pubs, many thousands of poker players, as well as online poker operators worldwide waited anxiously for the verdict.
After more than two hours of deliberation the jury agreed that by UK government definition poker is a game of chance, and convicted Kelly of illegally taking profits of as much as 10 percent from players on two occasions at the Gutshot club.
Justice Simon Wilkinson commented in court that a not guilty verdict "could have caused enormous problems for the gaming industry because then you have the green light in some people's eyes for unregulated poker."
Kelly faces a fine at a Feb. 16 hearing, but is unlikely to get a prison sentence according to Justice Wilkinson. Kelly said he is considering an appeal.
"It is important that we take time, take stock, and go down to Gutshot to rearrange what we do, but we are not closing,'" Kelly said in an interview after the decision.
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