by bryanrasmussen | 2026-01-20 20:23:10+00:00
>For example, in my mind, betting on whether you will win a game of chess is not gambling

As a general rule it is considered gambling not if skill is involved, but if there is any uncertainty involved.

And because there is not such thing as a perfect application of skill, all applications of skill have a degree of uncertainty to them. And you don't necessarily know how much your skill and luck will be in effect in the game.

In the context of Chess. Do you get to choose who you play against or is there a random draw? How close is the other player to you in skill? If you are both alike in skill then the skill application will be less important to the outcome.

I once lost a game at a tournament that had the rule that usage of en passant required saying en passant before doing it, so I was playing this guy whose skill was abysmal, we walked into a scenario where the very next move he did was going to allow me to do en passant, he had to take that move, or do something else that would lead to me taking his queen in the next move, and then folding up pretty all of his pieces and coming out two queens ahead. If he did the en passant move his position was worse, it was checkmate in like 10 moves.

If he had seen it and had any politeness and grace he would have just resigned. I mean it was extremely painful to have gotten into this position because it could be seen 20 moves before we were going to end up here and yet, he laboriously walked in to it, he could have gotten out before, by sacrificing a horse, and then a bit later he could have gotten out by sacrificing a horse and a knight, and then a horse and a knight and a castle, etc. etc. But nope, he just made move by stupid move into this position.

So then he made the move that I should make en passant with and ... I forgot the term "en passant" I couldn't remember the term to use, my brain froze, I probably let the clock run for ten minutes trying to remember the word, it's also not like I didn't know the move and the phrase, I had known it that 20 moves ago when I was thinking I do A, he do B I do C... and then en passant. But I couldn't remember.

Now if I had been not such a stickler for rules I might just have done it anyway hoping for him to accept and not require me to say it, but I didn't. So he won. Later my friend played him and he said "You lost to that guy?!" and I said "fuck I froze up and forgot the word to en passant, I had him setup to take all his stuff but because I forgot the word he had me. Damn it"

Despite differences of skill other factors can prevent the skill from being deployed to its greatest effect. If someone knew Bryan is skillful, but he does have a habit of choking up or sometimes losing focus in longer games, whereas that guy there sucks so the odds are 4 to 1 in Bryan's favor (which I was very much more skillful than this guy, so embarrassing), but that guy is skillful enough to drag it out a bit, and he will never give in, therefore it might make sense for me to bet a small amount in this case to leverage the uncertainty.

Because of course that kind of gambling is itself a form of skill.

If you only consider gambling on things that do not have any skill component, you then essentially say that gambling does not take any skill, which then leaves you with a large sphere of skilled activity, that many people have taken part in for many years of human society and that has traditionally been known as gambling, which now does not have a name to identify it.

What should this field of activity that you have rendered nameless by your fiat be called then?