Is Poker really Gambling?

I bring up this question because twice in the last week, I've had to defend the fact that the game we know and love, and spend so much time studying, is actually skill based and not on the same degenerate level of roulette and blackjack.

The first time was while talking to a recruiter, and here's the punchline, in the investment banking sector. I thought in this case, surely being a poker player would be a positive. In my opinion, the skill sets of the two occupations are parallel, one needs to assess the situation by assigning value to an asset, whether that be a stock or your cards, and then make a +EV decision based upon you assessment. We've seen so many people cross industries recently with great success so I thought including the fact that I'm a winning poker player in my application would be to my benefit. Apparently not, I had to defend the point that poker was not gambling, especially online poker, and delved into a list of reasons of why poker is a skill game based on logic, reasoning and mathematics. I specifically reasoned that poker cannot be gambling be otherwise no one would ever win, that by the law of averages, being a professional poker in the long run once you have played hundreds of thousands, or even millions of hands, cannot possibly exist unless there was a skill element. Hopefully my passionate speech and vehement defense of the game worked it's magic but that's yet to be seen.

The second occasion was when playing around with the settings on this blog. I was toying with the layout of the sidebars when I noticed I could place ads on the page and monetize the site. Being the money-grabber that I am I immediately sent off an application to AdSense in order to be considered for monetization but received a reply that I would not be allowed due to the blog containing gambling content. Besides the fact that according to their T&Cs I am actually allowed a gambling blog, I didn't think that a blog that contains my random ramblings and the odd trip report would be considered to be promoting gambling. I could maybe understand if I was a Pokerstars Pro promoting the site directly or something of that nature but surely a blog like this is harmless enough.

I imagine some of you readers have had similar experiences and I wonder what reasons you have given to explain that we are not just degenerate gamblers but intelligent logical thinkers who work extremely hard to make money at this game. Leave a comment below or tweet me (@Grimiscool) or of course you can just tell me, I imagine I have most of you on Skype anyway! Especially let me know if you've used Poker as a skill or interest on you resume to apply for a job and whether it seemed to work for you. Otherwise ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend and hopefully a big Sunday for all you grinders. Good luck all!