Up to lawmakers to make the final call
A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Nottingham, Erasmus University Rotterdam and VU University Amsterdam suggests that poker is a game of skill. That could lead the U.K. government to consider taxing poker winnings, and get its piece of a multibillion-dollar annual industry, according to the London Daily Mail.
The study found that players who ranked in the top 10 percent in the first six months of a year were twice as likely to win in the following six months, indicating that skill plays a significant role in poker success. And the more they played, the more they won:the players fared slightly better over the course of just a few hands, but were better more than three-quarters of the time when the total of hands reached 1,471.
“Skilled players will consistently outperform less skilled players if enough hands are played,” said Dennie van Dolder of the University of Nottingham’s School of Economics. “Poker involves an element of skill and can’t be merely a game of pure chance.”
He said legislators must decide if poker is actually a skill-based game, and if that is reason to tax winnings. “Our findings represent both good and bad news for players,” he said. “The good news is they will have the satisfaction of knowing the game they love is recognized as requiring real skill. The bad news is that one day they might have to start handing some of their winnings to the taxman if the policymaking community takes notice of findings like ours.”
The study was based on 456 million online hands observed over the course of a year.
