Last Monday, in a case involving a Staten Island poker parlor, a federal judge in Brooklyn, Jack B. Weinstein, ruled that poker is predominantly a game of skill and not a game of chance — the legal definition of gambling — and that game operators should not be prosecuted under a federal law that bars running an illegal gambling business.

Judge Weinstein’s decision was only the latest round in more than 160 years of legal wrangling over poker’s legitimacy. Last December, the Justice Department concluded that the Wire Act of 1962 applied only to sports betting, not poker. Together, the two decisions are likely to be a game-changing combination in favor of on-land and online poker and a severe setback for the nanny-state conservatives who’ve tried to ban them by lumping poker together with such obviously skill-free games of chance as craps, lotteries and bingo.

Are there a lot of games of skill for money, like poker?

It seems unusual that way.

I guess the stock market is kind of like poker -- some skill, some luck.

Stock markets are highly regulated. As they should be.