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Measuring Skill and Chance in Games

Author

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  • Duersch, Peter
  • Lambrecht, Marco
  • Oechssler, Joerg
Abstract
Online and offline gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry. However, games of chance are prohibited or tightly regulated in many jurisdictions. Thus, the question whether a game predominantly depends on skill or chance has important legal and regulatory implications. In this paper, we suggest a new empirical criterion for distinguishing games of skill from games of chance: All players are ranked according to a "best-fit" Elo algorithm. The wider the distribution of player ratings are in a game, the more important is the role of skill. Most importantly, we provide a new benchmark ("50%-chess") that allows to decide whether games predominantly (more than 50%) depend on chance, as this criterion is often used by courts. We apply the method to large datasets of various two-player games (e.g. chess, poker, backgammon, tetris). Our findings indicate that most popular online games, including poker, are below the threshold of 50% skill and thus depend pre- dominantly on chance. In fact, poker contains about as much skill as chess when 3 out of 4 chess games are replaced by a coin flip.

Suggested Citation

  • Duersch, Peter & Lambrecht, Marco & Oechssler, Joerg, 2017. "Measuring Skill and Chance in Games," Working Papers 0643, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:awi:wpaper:0643
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    Cited by:

    1. Lambrecht, Marco & Oechssler, Jörg, 2022. "Do women shy away from risky skill games?," Working Papers 0717, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    2. Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt & Johannes Kasinger & Dmitrij Schneider, 2024. "Skewness Preferences: Evidence from Online Poker," CESifo Working Paper Series 10977, CESifo.
    3. Lambrecht, Marco & Oechssler, Joerg, 2023. "Do women shy away from risky skill games?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 241-250.
    4. Hergueux, Jerome & Smagghue, Gabriel, 2023. "The dominance of skill in online poker," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Kasinger, Johannes & Schneider, Dmitrij, 2022. "Skewness preferences: Evidence from online poker," SAFE Working Paper Series 351, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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