The most bizarre part, to me, is that the law actually cared about the real probability distribution over winning conditions, instead of the surface appearance. That seems way too sensible for lawyers to have come up with.
Law is often written by people who don't understand something well enough to regulate it sensibly, they just draw some lines in ignorance and then are surprised when the knowing find creative ways around it.
"No gambling here. Bingo only, because little old ladies will vote against us in droves if we ban it too." "Ok, can we do a video bingo game?" "Sure. It's bingo." "Can we line up five bingo cards at once?" "Sure. It's bingo." "Can we add up corresponding cells and display those?" "Uh...sure. It's bingo...ish." "Can we display just the first line of that summation grid?" "Yea....ah. It's still...uh...bingo." "Numbers are just arbitrary-shape symbols; can we display whatever icons we want in place of those numbers?" "Uh...yeah...kinda odd, but don't see why not." "OK, here's our game. Take a look." "Hey! That's poker! That's illegal!" "No, it's bingo. It just looks like poker after every step YOU approved."
