Time to stereotype :)

Not much of interest to write about poker-wise lately... I had my first losing session of PLO last night, all my big draws missed and I whiffed a lot of flops. All told, since my final table in the Early Double last week my roll has dropped about $13. Big news, I don't think. So in lieu of a strategy post or tournament recap, here is the first post in the "Albino rankings of crappy poker players" series. First category grouped by - nationality :)

5th worst - UK. Yes, most of us Brits are horrible players with an excessive love of the gambooool. It is somewhat amusing that many of the Brits who play poker are the kind who hang around betting shops all day and have a foolproof "system" to pick horses, yet they have no real system to win consistently at poker, a game that CAN actually be beaten by well-thought-out strategy.

=4th worst - Austria/Italy. I haven't played with many Austrians, but those I have played with (mostly in the STTs during my down time at work) don't seem to have much idea what they are doing. Italians just can't resist making outrageous bluffs, even though much of the time they seem semi-competent. And they tilt outrageous if they ever get a beat. Fiery Latin temperament I suppose, but the net result is their family cornetto businesses are in danger of being gambled away online.

3rd worst - Germany. You would think the most organised nation in the world would be very good at poker; great discipline, almost robotic in the way they make +EV play after +EV play. But no, it seems that the poker tables are where Germans cast off the shackles of unwieldy stereotypes and let loose in a frenzy of donkishness, as if to try and prove to the world that they too are human beings, not machines, and that they are playing for fun, because they are fun-loving people. I don't buy it, but if it helps them sleep at night then I'll take their money and good luck to them.

2nd worst - Finland. The Scandinavians have a reputation for being whizzkids at internet poker, and as far as Sweden, Denmark (and to a lesser extent Norway) are concerned, I have found this to be true. However Finnish players are horribly bad. I have yet to hit on a satisfactory reason why this is... a combination of the terribly strong vodka and 24 hour darkness at certain times of year driving the entire nation demented is probably the most likely explanation. It doesn't really surprise me though... the Finnish language is descended from Hungarian apparently, and they are nowhere near Hungary geographically, so I am resigned to nothing about Finland ever making sense.

Worst - Hungary. In my experience, these people don't even know which order the CARDS rank in, let alone the order of hand rankings. There must be some sort of ancient Hungarian text, a medieval version of "Super System" if you will, only with all the paragraphs written upside down and with all the words re-arranged, and everyone is forced to study it at school (obviously the Finns have recently translated this ancient "Istvan the Great on Holdem" tract too).

Note that I have left the USA off the list, even though some of the very worst players I have ever seen are American; this is because there are so many US players on the major poker sites, sheer weight of numbers and sample size dictates that some will be very very good and some will be very very bad, and that on the whole the average American's standard of play will be totally, well, average.

All comments, queries and accusations of xenophobia welcome :)