Swedish Supreme Court Rules on Poker

The Swedes are reassessing their attitudes towards gambling and there are some contradicting voices coming from the small Scandinavian country.

As gamblers go the Swedish are known the world over as sharp and astute punters that have a love for all gambling games and although Sweden is relatively a small European country it has managed to produce many poker world and European champions.

However according to Swedish legislation any game where the element of luck outweighs the element of skill is considered to be criminal, and recently the Swedish Supreme Court had addressed last month following an appeal of individuals accused of organizing a poker tournament and sentenced to serve real jail time for the offense.

The Supreme Court has overturned the judgment and Judge Göran Lamberth justified the decision stating that "We have found that the main tournament and its side tournaments were not random chance games, but that skill does come in to it."

However in an interesting twist the court chose to define poker cash games as games that carry a large element of luck due to the ability of players to leave the game at any time and “Considering this, cash games must be deemed to be games where the outcome to an essential part can be attributed to luck,” the judge added.