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Those living in the United States now have a new place in which to play online poker. Introducing Skillbet.com.
How is it legal, you ask.
Skillbet.com claims to remove the element of chance from the equation by pitting two poker players against one another.
Basically it works something like this: Two players are dealt identical hands and play against the same five computer bots in Texas Hold ‘em. Whoever ends up with the most chips, excluding the bots, wins the differential between the two live players.
The concept has been tried before a la Duplicate Poker. It was a complete flop.
A rep for Skillbet.com, appearing on the TwoPlusTwo.com posting forum, explained the difference between Duplicate Poker and Skillbet. In a nutshell, Duplicate allowed for collusion whereas Skillbet does not.
“In SkillBet, this collusion is impossible as there are only two people competing,” the rep explained.
Note there are some states in which Skillbet has opted to exclude US-based players. SkillBet says it has an opinion Marc Zwillinger, a Harvard lawyer who was previously the head of internet gaming enforcement for the Department of Justice, supporting its claim that the game is legal in more than two dozen states.
Duplicate Poker’s downfall may have come from a lack of marketing efforts as opposed to limited demand. When one considers Zynga Poker ranks as the world’s largest online poker site without even offering a “real money” platform, the later notion might not hold water. Before Zynga, many experts suggested “free poker” could never survive and there were a handful of casualties supporting that claim.
Lacey Jones was made the face of Skillbet.com Poker.
- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com
