In addition to the games described above, there are a wide variety of other skill games that people bet on. We include here only games where the players bet on their own performance. The rules of these various games are beyond the scope of the present chapter. Since this type of gambling involves private bets, there is usually no house edge (unless we count club fees or pool table rentals as a house cost). In these games, long-term winning is possible if the player is skilled. As with poker, however, the player must find opponents who are weaker but willing to bet on the outcome of the game. In the movie The Hustler (Rossen, 1961), a man who is a very skilled pool player earns a living by pretending to be less skilled than he really is. Popular games of skill include bowling, golf, fishing, shooting hoops and one on one (forms of basketball), chess and checkers. These games differ from poker and dominoes in that they do not use a random number generator (no shuffling of cards or tiles). As such, random chance plays only a small role in the outcome of these games. Some players will give other players a handicap to make the bet more even (more random). For example, in golf, if two players are playing against each other and one usually takes 5 holes more to complete the course, the weaker player might be given a handicap of 5, that is, the weaker player would win the bet if he/she lost by only 4 shots. It is unlikely that many problem gamblers who present for treatment will list such private bets as their major problem; however, these private bets are very common amongst adolescent problem gamblers. It is likely that games of skill were the first serious form of gambling that many male pathological gamblers engaged in. In addition, problem gamblers often feel that they cannot enjoy games of skill without placing money on the outcome, so a therapist should consider such games as potential relapse risks. Interestingly, The Hustler (Rossen, 1961) and White Men Can’t Jump (Lester, Miller, Rappaport, & Shelton, 1992) are both films about pathological gamblers whose main problem is betting on their own play in a game of skill (Fritz & Turner, 2002).

 Back to Games and Systems