Are some nations better at poker than others?

Are French players loose? Are British players nits? Are German player's better than everyone else? Barry Carter discusses whether we should pay attention to nationality at the table.

I’d not thought about the common nationality stereotypes in poker for years, until my colleagues in the Poker School shared some interesting data.

We ran a series of hand analysis pieces where we invited our members to vote on the best decisions on several streets of a hand.

We ran it in most of our language sites, and we actually found that there was some notable differences between how players from certain regions chose to play the hands. Some nations were clearly more aggressive or passive than the others. 

We know we shouldn't judge a person's ability based on where they are from, however, how many of us can say we haven’t done it at the poker table? How many of us honestly can say that we haven’t hovered our mouse over a players avatar, seen that they are from Germany or Russia or Italy, and that has not biased our decision making a little? 

Are Russian players robotic?

I guess the poker stereotypes we transfer onto players because of their nationality are in keeping with the perceptions they suffer in the wider world. For a long time, for example, I think most German players were perceived as being tight and calculated, because we have a strong stereotype of German efficiency.

These days I just assume a German player is very very good, because they seem to win at everything (Poker, World Cups, the Economy etc).

Russian players sometimes get labelled as being robotic. This can be taken to two extremes, robotic in the sense of they are mass multi-tabling and playing ABC poker, or robotic in the fact that some people suspect they are actually playing against a bot. I guess ultimately this is a thinly veiled compliment like the German stereotype, the Russians must be playing a solid style if this is what they get called out for. 

In our report German and Russian players generally were close to the mean average, perhaps a little bit more on the side of tight-aggressive. 

Are French players all loose-passive?

Then you have probably the ultimate poker stereotype, that French, Italian, Spanish and Greek players are loose passive. I think this conforms to a wider cultural stereotype that they are more passionate and impulsive; two qualities that are not necessarily suited to the poker table. 

However, from our report, we found a mixed bag for this stereotype. French players folded less, but they were much more likely to raise than to just call. In general they were (Along with the Polish) the most aggressive players. However, Spanish players were among the most passive; less likely to continuation bet or reraise on the turn.  

I’m a Brit and I know full well what our perceived stereotype is; that we are nits who moan about bad beats a lot. I am sad to say, in our report, British players did indeed have the second lowest continuation bet percentage of all our communities. 

Do the Germans win more than everyone else?

Deep down, I don’t actually think it is a form a prejudice to jump to these conclusions. Ultimately the main reason why I think we make these assumptions is more to do with the state of the poker market rather than the habits of the nation. Poker is not huge in Spain compared to Germany, for example, so it stands to reason they wont have the strongest players yet. 

Since 2006 if you saw a player from the United States at your table, you would be very wise to assume they were a good player. This is not because they are naturally more talented, but simply because the UIGEA essentially forced most of the recreational players out of the online game in the US. Only the best American players, those who made a living from the game, were prepared to risk staying on the big sites.

I don’t think we should draw too many conclusions from a player’s nationality these days, mostly because the availability of poker information on the internet has levelled the playing field and anyone has access to the tools they need to thrive at poker. 

There are some small nuggets of information we can possibly gleam from a player’s nationality, but they are few and far between, and getting less so every day. For the most part, I think these stereotypes just make for some harmless banter in the exact same way we have all just enjoyed with the World Cup. 

Do you have any poker stereotypes that you think when you see certain nationalities at your table? Do you think stereotypes can be useful information? Do you think it’s wrong to profile opponents in this way? What common poker stereotypes do you believe? Let me know in the comments box. 

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2. He has been working in the poker industry for nine years and in 2013 won the APAT Award for Best Poker Media Provider. You can learn more about his work here.  Follow Barry Carter on Twitter l Follow Barry Carter on Google+