That's a misunderstanding of poker at a high level.

While poker does have a significant element of chance in a given hand, it's no accident that top players consistently make more money over the long run.

Knowing how much to bet based on your odds of winning a hand, figuring out what your opponent's hands could be based on how they're betting, etc. all take skill. There's a reason poker AI can consistently beat humans over the long run, a feat that would be impossible if poker was all about chance.

In fact, poker AI was a difficult area to create software in precisely because the game is one of imperfect information.

The main difference between chess and poker is perfect and imperfect information.

It is decidedly not skill.

> All you have to do is look back at Bobby Fisher who rarely if ever even looked at his opponent.

Physical "tells" are largely a myth in poker, particularly in high-level poker. Please don't speculate wildly on things with at most a novice-level understanding.

The interesting thing is that it is actually the opposite. It's been conjectured that with optimal play Chess ends in a draw (and if it's instead a win for white/black basically the same argument applies). So for two sufficiently smart players the best you can do is avoid blundering your draw away. Winning against a weaker opponent is impossible without psychology and subterfuge. You have to put your opponent in tricky spots where you know he is weak.

Poker on the other hand, by being random, means that you can mindlessly play the mathematically optimal strategy. Eventually your opponent will be put in a tough spot by pure randomness.

Actually, the title is essentially clickbait, at least versus what you naturally read it as, and is all a setup for the final paragraph:

"In that context, cheating scandals may be nothing less than a natural step in chess’s evolution. Poker, after all, has been rocked by allegations of foul play for years, including cases where players are accused of getting help from artificial intelligence. When the highest form of creativity is outfoxing your opponent—as has always been true of poker—breaking rules seems only natural."

I'm ruling this "clickbait" because while the core idea is reasonable, that is clearly a very weak way of phrasing it solely done to be in service of a clickbait title. Without the need for clickbait it's trivial to phrase that in a better way.

Poker is certainly not just about chance; skill, particularly aptitude for maths and psychology are important at high levels. Chance does play a role though, which is generally not the case in chess.

In the highest levels of chess, psychological fortitude and physical fitness are also important.

Bobby Fischer seems to disagree with you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=11s

If poker was "about" chance you wouldn't see the same top players every year in the finals of every major competition. The chance aspect is why poker is so interesting. But in the long run (ie, 100 games played with the same players), a great poker player will beat an average one 95% of the time.

> Poker is about chance, chess is actual skill.

Maybe you missed it. Humans are now using deceit to trick opponents trained by AI. While they may not "look at" their opponent, they are using similar strategies deployed in poker such as bluffing/misdirection/cloaking etc.

>Poker is about chance

If this were true, then the recurrent Pocker champions must be the luckiest persons in the world, luck is undoubtedly an element, but there are many ways to influence other variables of the game.

One could equally say "chess is about memorization, poker is actual skill".