17 Sep
(Photo: Cardplayer.com)
The recent pronouncements of online poker ‘anti-christ’ Sheldon Adelson have prompted high-stakes pro Brian Rast to issue a $2million challenge to the casino mogul in an effort to prove to the ageing opponent of online regulation that poker is indeed a game of skill rather than chance.
Rast’s tweet was followed by others – and also support from poker legend Doyle Brunson who even offered to add to the kitty!
The multi-billionaire Adelson has been a fierce critic of online poker, funding many attempts to block state legislation which would give legitimacy to the game. In a recent interview with Yahoofinance he once again riled the poker community by asking:
“How skill can apply to somebody shuffling a deck of cards and randomly giving them out…You don’t have any control over it. Can somebody bluff and can somebody place bets better than somebody else? Yes. But that doesn’t make poker a game of skill.”
Naturally the poker community was more than willing to point out the very obvious flaws in Adelson’s thinking.
Adding shortly afterwards:
A tweet from fellow high-stakes and high-profile poker pro Jason Mercier hit the nail on the head as far as many were concerned:
“Sheldon Adelson could be the biggest idiot on the planet.”
The CEO and owner of Las Vegas Sands casino, Adelson has enraged many in the poker world by his persistent efforts to have poker classified as a game of chance, stating that: “I am willing to spend whatever it takes,” to prevent online poker being legalized.
He added back in 2013:
“My moral standard compels me to speak out on this issue because I am the largest company by far in the industry and I am willing to speak out. I don’t see any compelling reason for the government to allow people to gamble on the internet.”
He was joined recently by one of the top DFS companies in his view, FanDuel CFO Matt King stating:
“There is a lot of academic research on this, what’s the skill versus luck kind of spectrum. The reality is within poker, every time you shuffle the deck, it creates an element of luck that trumps it basically to being much more a chance-dominated game than a skill-dominated game,” who then added that DFS “is truly a game of skill.”
This argument, of course, cuts no ice with those who actually understand poker, Brian Rast having the final word for the moment when he tweeted:
Adelson, of course, will never accept such an offer – but it’s always good to see our top pros putting such people in their place!
