Well so much for that big PLO challenge between Ola “Odd Oddsen” Amundsrud and Norwegian politician Erlan Wiborg. The pair was supposed to play 10,000 hands of PLO in order to prove Amundsrud’s argument that poker is a skill game. In exchange, Wiborg had a chance at winning 1m Kr ($170k) if he could beat Odd_Oddsen over the course of 10k hands.
The poker pro and politician recently got their challenge underway by playing 1,000 hands at $0.50/$1 PLO. As was to be expected, Odd_Oddsen dominated the heads-up match, winning $2,666 off of Wiborg. Apparently, losing more than 26 buy-ins over the course of 1k hands was too much for Wiborg and he folded the challenge.
1,000 hands isn’t exactly the largest sample size in cash games. But with the way that Odd_Oddsen beat the politician, it’s safe to say that he proved his point about poker being a skill game. The question is, though, how far will this go towards helping poker legislation in Norway?
At this time, Norway has one of the harshest stances on poker in the world. Lottstift, which currently regulates Norwegian gambling, states the following regarding the game’s legality:
Poker is considered a lottery in Norway and is therefore not legal. This means that it is not legal to arrange poker clubs or poker tournaments.
Given the fact that people aren’t even supposed to play live cash games or tournaments in Norway, a lot of work needs to be done in regard to softening this stance. So it’s likely that Amundsrud’s smackdown on Erlan Wiborg is just a piece of the puzzle. But given the fair amount of press that this PLO matchup garnered, and the way that it played out, Odd_Oddsen has definitely made an impact in the quest for legal Norwegian poker.