betting on a football match of roulette spin as a better you have no controll over the outcome by no matter how much skill is involved but playing poker, you do control the destiny of the game.
By that logic, you don’t control the outcome in a poker game either. You are still at the mercy of which cards come and when. But of course, the skill is knowing how to make the best decision whatever cards come. And so it is with sports, the skill is being able to consistently predict the outcome of events such that you will make a profit long term. You will lose on many occasions, but you will win on more occasions (or at least, win more money when you do win)
Blackjack is not normally a game of skill. All you can do is memorise perfect strategy, which will give you the lowest possible house edge. You will still lose (long term), just not as much. There’s no skill involved, it’s just memory.
There are two situations where blackjack does involve skill. One is when you count cards in a real casino. The other, for online casinos, is bonus hunting – though technically the skill there is not in the actual playing of the blackjack, but rather in knowing when a bonus provides you with an edge and exploiting that edge consistently such that you show a profit.
As Nick says, there is skill in sports betting and it is definitely reasonable to class it in the same league as poker. Poker also has an edge of course – it is not a zero-sum game, you must pay the rake to the house. If you were to play completely break-even poker, you would actually still lose because you would have had to pay the house to play. So winning poker players are ones who can play a better-than-break-even game, enough to overcome the cost of playing.
My argument was never that sportsbetting does not involve skill, but rather that very few sportsbooks would ever want to publically admit that there are players who consistently make money from them. Nick is right that a good sportsbook will profit despite (and in fact, partly because of) these players, but the fact is that the majority of sportsbooks don’t see it that way and will ban professional players if they get the chance. Though that may be misguided, it shows that they would never use the ‘skill gaming’ argument to defend themselves.