I'm not from the US, so didn't know that, but it is stupid. Gambling and game of skill are not mutually exclusive. Gambling means that there is some variance, some risk involved. You gamble on the outcome. That doesn't mean you cannot develop a skillset which will make taking the risk profitable, over the long term. Any law that says otherwise is ill-written.
By that definition, every action you undertake is gambling. Driving to the grocery store is gambling. But since regulating driving your car to the shop under "gambling" laws doesn't make sense, "gambling" as a legal concept involves wagering money on games of chance, and "games of chance" is a distinct concept which is separated from "games of skill". This is the line that DFS is trying to walk, because the skill side of the line is the side that lets them operate in places where gambling is more strictly regulated.
Like I said, any law that insists on making a mutual distinction between games of skill and gambling (risking money on a probability of an outcome) is ill-written.
Poker is a game of skill just like backgammon. You can wager money and there is risk (chance) involved, but you can develop skills which will ensure that you are a winner over a less skilled opponent. Just like golf. There is always the chance that you will not make the necessary strikes and a less skilled opponent takes a game from you, but over the long run, you can sufficiently influence the outcome and achieve a positive win rate. This is what makes it a skill-based game. You influence it by your skills. You can place wagers and gamble on the outcome, but that doesn't suddenly make it any less not a game of skill.
I'm not very familiar with fantasy sports, but to the best of my knowledge, the same holds true there too.
A game of chance cannot be distinguished from games of skill. All games involve chance. This problem probably arises from the poor understanding of "chance" and probabilities by the people who wrote the law (presuming Hanlon's razor here). They wanted to ban games where the operator bleeds the players dry, like slots, lottery, etc., and called them "game of chance", but there is more to the story of "chance", like i outlined above.
Actually, I think your argument rests on a poor understanding of the laws you are criticizing, as you presume incorrectly that they rely on definitions of "game of chance" and "game of skill" such that the former must have no element of skill and the latter no element of chance.
The definitions are different in each case, but none of them work that way. In New York, for instance, the outcome depending materially on chance, whether or not skill is also involved, makes it a game of chance.
I think you may misunderstand the purpose of the gambling laws here. Do you have a citation for their purpose as a consumer-protection measure?
Given the government's heavy use of lotteries and other gambling as a cash source, the laws appear to be designed by lawmakers with a solid understanding of chance and probability and a desire to ensure that monetary gambling (with gambling defined as "an activity where the influence of chance outweighs the benefits of skill, for most participants") be restricted to the state, not commercial entities.
It might very well be the case. I'm not sure about their motives, I even said so. I don't see how that affects the poorly written definition and the case that poker and fantasy sports are games of skill.
The relevant point being that not everybody believes they're a "game of skill" in the "skill vs. chance" slider which is relevant to the law. While there's no question that like every game, user actions (skill) can impact the outcome, how much it can impact the outcome is what determines whether something is classified as a game of skill or chance. Perhaps it's more clear if we say "a game of primarily skill" or "primarily chance".
If daily fantasy sports is primarily skill-based, they can do it. If it's primarily chance-based, it's illegal in the US. Which is why they're pushing for it to be referred to as "skill-based".
Some laws use a predominance test; New York law, which seems to be the main focus, does not -- it uses material element of chance standard, which can apply even when a game is primarily skill-based.
Beating the point spread wagering on NFL games is also a game of skill then. There are some sports betters who are better at analyzing data than the bookies are who consistently make money.
Very few games that we'd call gambling (e.g. blackjack) are 100% chance though. Maybe dice games? Lotteries? Even in games where the house always has edge, you can lose less by playing optimally.
But this is also true for playing the stock market.
Indeed, the stock market and fantasy sites are extremely similar, with the same fundamental issue -- a small number of people with a technical and information advantage are essentially skimming the table clean of the entry fees of a lot of people picking randomly or emotionally.
It's not really like the stock market since with stocks the majority of players "win" when measured over a sufficiently long time scale. A better analogy would be playing the derivatives market, which is zero sum (minus broker fees).
