BY TOM SOMACH

There’s long been a debate in poker circles whether the game is mostly one of luck or skill.

One Internet poker room claims to have removed the element of luck from the game and made it 100% skill.

At Thwart Poker (www.thwartpoker.com), Texas hold ‘em, for example, is played a little differently.

Instead of each player being dealt different hole cards and then playing a community flop, players get to choose what hole cards they want before playing the flop.

According to Thwart Poker, being able to choose your hole cards, instead of depending on the luck of the draw, removes the luck element from the game and makes it totally skill-based.

And if it’s totally skill-based, the thinking goes, then it’s not gambling, and therefore not illegal under anyone’s definition of gambling.

Which is how, at least in the view of the Thwart Poker head honchos, the website can operate from Palo Alto, Calif., in the U.S.

According to the Thwart Poker website: “After playing a few games, it becomes apparent that Thwart Poker is at once something exceptionally new, and at the same time, something completely familiar. “The defining feature of regular poker is that every card is randomly dealt. By removing the element of random dealing (and therefore the principal element of chance) and replacing it with strategic card selection, a unique type of skill-based game altogether has been created.

“With the introduction of card selection, Thwart Poker adds a whole new dimension to regular poker that involves additional levels of offensive and defensive skill and strategy that makes it more similar to chess and scrabble than to regular poker.”

Poker games at Thwart Poker don’t involve real money, so you can’t lose any cash.

You can win prizes, however.

And, like many other websites that claim to be for poker “gaming” as opposed to poker “gambling,” Thwart Poker’s poker games are free to play, but you have to pay a “fee” to join the website and play the games.

Also on the Thwart Poker website, in a section devoted to questions and answers about Thwart Poker, it reads: “Is ThwartPoker gambling? No. The outcome of all Thwart Poker games is based upon the player’s skill, not chance.

“This is in sharp contrast to lotteries or games typically found in casinos, where every player ultimately faces the same random odds. Your skill in playing determines whether you win here at Thwart Poker.

“For each tournament, there is the same fixed cost to each player to play and a prize of predetermined value for the winner. Those tournaments that involve betting only use play money that has no effect on either the cost to any player in playing or the predetermined value of the winner’s prize.

“Thwart Poker subscription-based or entry-fee tournaments are no different from carnival games, golf tournaments or the myriad of other skill-based games that have been played for cash or prizes in the offline world for dozens of years–we’ve just taken them online.”

For those who still may have worries that the Brown Shirts are going to knock down their doors and arrest them for gambling online, Thwart Poker elsewhere on its site makes the point more succintly: “Thwart Poker games are skill-based and therefore do not violate U.S. federal gambling law.”

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)