It also needs to be factored in the nature of the game.

A coin flip isn't a) very entertaining nor b) skill based.

That's why games at casinos like poker and blackjack are quite popular, because they have either skill or the illusion of skill involved while also being entertaining.

That's how you get someone to agree to a bet like this - added value of the event itself.

20 years ago was the tail end of the shareware boom, which is a different approach to "freemium". In that model, developers created a great game (Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, Jazz Jackrabbit, Quake, OMF 2097, etc) and gave you a sizable, fully playable chunk of it for free as promotion.

The difference is, back then there was not much attention paid to "casual gaming". Games were designed to be fun and challenging. Times have changed and now games are designed to be easy and addictive instead.

Today's freemium model is more like video poker. It's not much fun but you keep putting money in because of the potential for an easy reward. That's the mechanic that keeps gambling addicts going back to the casinos and it's also the business model that makes "casual gaming" so profitable without having to make good games.

Almost put this in the comedy channel (although, it's more like a tragedy for the guy). It's more like a bureaucratic farce, regardless.. And, like all good comedies, a cautionary tale.

No big deal, of course. It's not like many taxpayers don't already pay for other people's kids... (and, likely, WAY more than $30K, because, y'know... "common good.")

In cases like these, they may just have well used a lottery of all registered voters and randomly select one of them to pay. Like a jury duty, but with child-support duty... Maybe even have a woman be the "deadbeat dad." And then the Great Fiction could be enjoyed as though it were a game.. like poker..

or roulette.

Are you F*#@ing kidding me?!?
Bluffing in a GAME that ALL PARTICIPANTS VOLUNTEER to play where bluffing is PART OF THE GAME is not the same thing as accosting a citizen who's doing nothing and lying to them in order to trick them into letting you fuck their life up permanently. Consider some asshole doing that to your family, I am 100% certain your tune would change instantly.
...And yes, I've played poker, but I'm not good at it because I'm not good at 'fooling' people. I would never play with cops, they're professional liars.
Just stop talking dude, you're digging a hole you can't climb out of.
Less problem with the courts...FUCK THE POLICE!

The courts have ruled that police officers can bluff. You can call it lying. Ever play poker?

Damn those courts again, right?

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Suits are all equal in poker (in Hold'em anyway) - so they'd have chopped the pot (each taking half the chips)

In poker (except peculiar varieties) the suits are not ranked. They might use the ranks if they are drawing cards from a deck as way to determine who starts as dealer, for example, but not as part of hand strength. There is an alternative order, CHaSeD, which is ascending alphabetical order, but that is not standard in poker circles for any purpose.

Incidentally - if both men have the same pair as one another, then both men cannot get a flush.

@modulous I believe that if they both had a flush that the spades flush would take it. I'm not 100% sure about how the rules apply to the world series of poker, but, traditionally, the suits do have value. I believe the order is:
Spades
Hearts
Diamonds
Clubs
The value is alphabetical.

Can anyone figure the odds of one of these two men winning with a flush

There are 1,712,304 possible boards. 1,637,884 result in a tie. 74,420 of them result in one of them winning. There is a winner 4.34% of the time which is a probability of approximately 1 in 25 or 24:1 against.

So this isn't an incredibly bad beat even for poker, this scenario has played out countless times, and I bet it happened at other times in this tournament (if we count more than just Aces v Aces). It just feels bad given the stakes, which are pretty high for most pro high stakes poker players. Imagine instead this. You hold KcKs and your opponent goes all-in so you call. He curses (hoping you'd fold) Pokerstove tells me KK against two random cards wins 82% of the time. However he turns over Kd2c. This is a 95% chance of winning. The flop comes: Jh 4d 8s. Your probability of winning is now 99.7%. Then comes 2s - it's OK you still have over 95% chance of winning, unless...2d.

Not that incredible, Zuckerburg was a billionaire at that point. Jobs had over $200M, at a time that in today's dollars would be close to $1B. Lots of people throw their money behind their children so they can achieve stuff instead of earning it themselves.

There's tons of people on the planet who have "money to burn". As well, if he's proven he's good at poker elsewhere, he could have financial backers as well.

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Twenty-five-year-old already has enough money that he can lose a million dollars at a poker game?

Would you say drawing random hands of cards is what makes poker interesting?

Racing, by whatever limited definition I assume you're using that excludes all application of intellect, isn't one tenth of Formula 1.

Actually attending the events, incidentally, is quite the wrong way to appreciate the complexities of the game. It seems to me that you're nothing more than a shallow, gawping spectacle-whore.