Adelson’s poker swipe prompts pro player to issue $2M challenge

Well, he’s consistent. Let’s give him that.

Sheldon Adelson, one of the richest men in the world, has kicked up yet another poker controversy with his latest anti-poker comments. In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Adelson—the man who made his billions off of gambling—insisted that like daily fantasy sports, poker is not a cerebral pursuit, and most definitely, is not a game of skill.

The Las Vegas Sands CEO asserted how he finds it hard to understand “how skill can apply to somebody shuffling a deck of cards and randomly giving them out” to players, telling the news outlet: “You don’t have any control over it. Can somebody bluff and can somebody place bets better than somebody else? Yes. But that doesn’t make poker a game of skill.”

Of course, a comment like this—especially since it came from Adelson, a staunch online poker opponent—will catch the ire of the poker community, some of whom have taken to questioning the businessman’s intelligence.