News: Explained: Are some nations better at poker than others?

Why is it that some nations are feared at the poker table and others are not? We explain why and it has very little to do with national stereotypes.

team uk poker — Are Brits really tighter than most?

We have a lot of new players at PokerStrategy.com and we have to therefore remember that a lot of the conversations that experienced players take for granted will sometimes go over their head. So when stories in the poker world come up that only make sense to experienced poker players, I am going to spell out what we are talking about for the newbies.

Browsing a poker forum this week I saw a thread where a player was perplexed that Americans had a reputation for being weaker players online than in other parts of the world. However, had you asked around in 2010 you would have been told to avoid sites with lots of American regulars. There was once a time when German players didn’t really have an impact on world poker, now they are the most feared players ever known. Likewise in the early days of online poker if you saw a Scandinavian player sit down you would leave the table, they had the reputation the Germans have now, but no longer.

There is a reason why players from different parts of the world are considered softer or tougher than others and it is very little to do with national stereotypes. Whether the typical country’s player is softer or weaker has almost everything to do with the state of the poker market where they live.

But let’s get some national stereotypes out of the way first, they do have some impact. We tend to default to the funnier ones like the Brits are reserved (and therefore tight, which I actually think is true, as Brit myself), the Germans are efficient and the Italians are wild. I don’t think there is a shred of evidence that there are biological differences between players from different regions, but if you look at the educational systems of some countries they can reflect how their players approach the game. Scandinavians, for example, learn a lot of languages at a young age and score highly in international school rankings, and for a long time they were light years ahead of the rest of the world. The same could be argued for Germans right now and I suspect that if poker ever becomes huge in Asia we will see the same there.

The online poker difference

germany poker 888poker — Are Germans really that much better than everyone else?

But that is a pretty small factor, the reality is the biggest factor in how tough a poker demographic is is entirely based on their poker market, in particular how much access they have to online poker.

Exhibit A is the American poker market. In 2010 PokerStars and Full Tilt were considered the toughest sites because they allowed American players. partypoker was considered much softer because they had withdrawn from the US market in 2006. Poker is, after all, an American pasttime and host to the WSOP and WPT, the biggest events in the game at the time.

However, in 2011 Black Friday happened and for a long time US players had little to no options for online poker. No longer could bright young college kids spin up a $50 deposit into something substantial, nor could anyone satellite into big live events for a few bucks. Most of all, Americans lost the ability to play thousands upon thousands of hands in a month. They could only play live poker and even then, unless you live in Nevada, it is hard to get to a casino Stateside.

Contrast that to most Europeans who had access to all the main poker sites, could play thousands of hands a month, satellite into live events and in many cases had a local casino down the street. It was inevitable they were going to improve massively as players after Black Friday compared to their friends across the pond. The only Americans who continued to develop, and who crush today, are the ones who moved abroad to play online and live.

Hands per month

Scandinavian players were once the most feared in the world

Access to online poker really is the benchmark for how tough a poker demographic is. If Player A gets 1,000 hands in a month at weekends at their casino and Player B gets 3,000 hands in a night online, Player B will improve at a much faster rate. In that respect, newer poker markets are also softer because they haven’t had online poker for as long. France, Spain and Italy were also considered very soft for a long time and the typical argument was because they were too ‘passionate’ (as per the national stereotypes), but the reality is online poker became popular there later than in other parts of Europe, so they were playing catchup.

There are also considerations about the economic climate in a country and the state of their currency. In some countries wages are low and the dollar is strong (the currency of online poker), so there is a lot of incentive to learn the game (I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing a lot of people for SpinLegends in this exact situation). If your wage is the equivalent of $600 a month then getting good at 25NL is a very enticing prospect. However, for an American player it would be hard to motivate yourself to learm to crush small stakes for $600 a month when your rent and healthcare is way more than that.

I once played PLO in Vegas and when everyone heard my accent they all assumed I was the best player at the table. It was 2007 and at the time PLO was considered a European game, so because I was a Brit my table gave me way too much respect. You obviously should judge every player on their individual merits (because I’m pretty bad at PLO and they were dead wrong) and if you think a player will be dumb because of where they are from, you are probably the actual fish. But you can make reasonable judgements about the player population based not on the people themselves, but the state of the poker industry where they live.

These images are courtesy of 888poker and their '8-Team Challenge' event.

The online poker difference

Hands per month

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