Black Friday killed many an online poker room, but on that day in April just over a year ago, the seed was planted for a new type of poker site. It took a long time, but that seed finally sprouted this month in the form of SkillBet.com. SkillBet touts itself as a pure skill game and claims it is legal in over half the states in the U.S.
On SkillBet, players do not compete at the same table against one another directly. Instead, players challenge each other indirectly by playing at identical tables. This is where SkillBet believes that the game changes from a hybrid skill/chance game to a contest solely based on skill.
In a SkillBet game, two players sit in the same seat at two separate tables, surrounded by the exact same computer foes. Every player in the corresponding seats, human or otherwise, is dealt the exact same cards. For example, if the bot in Seat 1 on Table 1 is dealt two red Aces, the bot in Seat 1 on Table 2 is also dealt two red Aces. The same community cards are dealt on each table, as well. The only thing that differentiates the two tables is the decision making of the two human players.
As the operators of SkillBet write on their site, “We offer games of skill only. Our first game is like regular No Limit Texas Hold’em without the luck of the draw (e.g., both players play the same hand against the same opponents). The only factor determining who wins are the decision of the two players – and therefore, it is unquestionably a game of skill.
“Our games are no different from carnival games, chess and golf tournaments or other skill-based games that have been played for cash or prizes for hundreds of years.”
SkillBet says that gambling law expert Marc Zwillinger, once head of internet gaming enforcement for the U.S. Department of Justice, supports the notion that this is not gambling and is therefore totally legal.
Another expert, Chuck Humphrey, agrees, telling the Denver Post, “They’ve eliminated the element of chance.”
SkillBet offers two types of games: SkillBet Live and SkillBet Challenge. In SkillBet Live, two players pay a buy-in and play on their respective tables at the same time. After each hand, the difference between each player’s winnings or losses in the hand is awarded to whomever did the best. As an example, if Player A wins $6 in the first hand and Player B loses $2, Player A is awarded the difference of $8, while that same amount is taken from Player B’s buy-in. After 30 hands, the game can end and players can walk away with their winnings (or minus their losses), though if the players choose, they can continue in hand-for-hand mode.
Interestingly, the chip stacks actually in play are totally separate from the buy-in. This way, even if a player goes all-in and loses, he will still have a chance to make it back during the hands that remain. In the example shown on the SkillBet website, the buy-in for the game was $300, but each player started with 100 chips. Those 100 chips are reset after every hand, though the overall money each player has will fluctuate. In the prior example, after the first hand, Player A will have $308 (less rake) and Player B will have $292, but each player’s chip stack will go back to 100 for the next hand.
In SkillBet Live games, one player cannot watch the other until he is done with his hand.
SkillBet Challenge is similar to SkillBet Live, but in this format, the game always stops after 30 hands and whichever player is up the most money (or down the least) at the end wins the entire buy-in from his opponent. Challenges can be started without both players online. The players have 24 hours to complete the Challenge once it begins.
A similar site called Duplicate Poker opened in 2004, but shut down in 2008, citing the “global financial crisis” as the cause of its problems.
