October 13, 2009 (CAP Newswire) — In Wichita, the state of Kansas has defied the current trend in which states are tending to legally classify poker as a game of skill, not chance, in order to de-classify it from the gambling world and allow it to be more widely accepted and legalized.
Specifically, a judge in Kansas ruled late last week that a variation of poker known as Kandu Challenge is technically a game of chance — and so it’s illegal by the state’s laws.
Judge Timothy Lahey’s decision sided with the Kansas state attorney general, and against the inventors of the unique poker game (also the owners of a Wichita card room in which the game was played). The attorney general had charged that the Kandu Challenge is a “thinly veiled illegal poker game”, and had ordered the game to be stopped in June.
“That prompted the business owner, Cobra Crew LLC, and inventors Three Kings Holdings LLC to sue, seeking a ruling that the game was mostly one of skill and therefore not illegal,” according to the Kansas City Star.
The state counter-argued that the game was simply a slightly modified version of Texas Hold’em. That argument prevailed. “All the elements of a lottery under Kansas law — consideration, chance and prize — are met after the completion of each game of Kandu Challenge as defined by its rules,” the judge wrote.
It may be useful to remember that Kansas is the state that fights against the theory of evolution being taught in its classrooms — therefore, it doesn’t necessarily embody trends for the entire United States. As a more positive counterpoint, the somewhat conservative state of South Carolina recently made an opposite ruling, deciding that poker is a game of skill, not chance, thereby overturning the convictions of five men who’d been arrested for playing the game.
Click here to read more about the Kansas story at the Kansas City Star; click here for more details on the South Carolina ruling.