SKILL OR CHANGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 176, 26 June 1926, Page 6

SKILL OR CHANGE.

GAMES AT SHOWS. MAGISTRATE’S COMMENTS. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, June 25. “It seems to me that the games have just that degree of skill that takes them out of the Act,” said Mr J. W. Poynton, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court to-day, when he dismissed charges brought by the police against Maurice Darling, Frank De Lyall, and James McCorkindale, showmen, who had stalls at the winter show. The three men were charged with playing in a public-place a game of chance known as “box ball,” McCorkindale being further charged with playing “ski-alley,” another game of chance. The defonce was that the games wero of skill and not of chance. After describing in detail the manner in which the games were played, the Magistrate continued: “The law as to such games is an unsatisfactory one. A lot of decisions rule that any game with skill in it, however small, is not a game of chance, and another equally weighty one is that even if there is skill in the game, if the element of chance enters largely into it, it is not a game of skill. In both these games the skill to be possibly acquired is small. A tall man with long arms playing box ball may reach to within a few inches of the edges of the holes, and with a little practice should be able to drop the ball into any desired pocket, while a short person or a child is at a serious disadvantage in this respect. His eyes, too, being low, he would have a difficulty in seeing the numbers of the pockets. “In ski-alley there is also very little skill. At the top of the table, where the ball drops over the edge of the incline into the pockets, the green baize is thicker than on the other parts of the table, and this tends to force the ball back. In such a case another throw of a ball is granted. A skilled player would play with just sufficient force to send the ball over the edge, and with practice would acquire a certain skill in placing the balls into selected holes, but not much. If the law is to be altered, and it certainly should be in the interests of our children, the test ought to be not ns at present: Is there any skill in the game if played by practised players? but: Is it a game of chance to those who indulge in it and from whoso pockets the funds are extracted to keep it going ” The magistrate concluded with tho words of Judge Edwards regarding a case which he tried : “It is a species of amusement designed to extract small sums of money from the pockets of the foolish, principally tho young and foolish, who are visitors to racecourses and other places of public amusement. It does more than empty their pockets; it inoculates such foolish persons and children with the fever of gambling, a vice already too prevalent in the community.”