Put me down as an (E) sfobv. won in vegas again this summer, win online, but sometimes act like a **** so everyone thinks i'm terrible

Not that i'm any sort of authority...

Some UK live Pros I think are good:
Dave Colclough
Neil Channing
Julian Thew
Julian Gardner
Jon Kalmar
The Hitsquad

Some UK Pros I think are bad:
Dave Smith
John Duthie
Lucy Rokach
Marc Goodwin
Barry Neville
Joe Grech - i've played with him 3 times, he seems fine deepstacked. In the Rio $340 he limped 4bbs in a limped pot OTB and folded to one raise. In the Bellagio $1k he limp called OTB 15bbs~ deep with Q8o and got the rest in on a JT8 monotone board)

Theres loads more bad pros i'd recognise at a GUKPT or something but don't know their names.

Add Surindar and Ben Roberts to that list.

Naturally this thread just came down to batting some national stereotypes around, but I think there are some interesting comments.

I work for a big UK poker magazine, which means I get an insider's view. As a poker-playing nation we are way behind the States. But that's not to see poker isn't becoming A Big Thing over here. There are some very good players around now, but obviously there is nowhere near the amount of very good players that there are in the US. Hence, why one bracelet win (Marty Smyth from Northern Ireland in the PLO World Championship) per year in the WSOP is probably as much as we expect to win given that we probably only make up a tiny percentage of each field.

There is no college culture over here of 18-year-old kids playing online. So that makes a big difference. That might come along in the next few years. For now players like MoormanI (ranked 2 on P5s) and stevie444 have to carry the flag for Brit online players. And Roland de Wolfe, John Tabatabai, etc for the live players.

It will never be as culturally big over here as it is in the States, so there's no real comparison. But being as poker isn't a team game it shouldn't really matter to compare. There are lots of poker players in Britain earning very good money, and millions more losing. The same goes on in America, just on a much bigger scale.

There's a big poker mag in the UK? Really? Surely, that would require a robust poker culture to sustain it, but as you point out, none exists in the UK. There are a couple of small poker mags (handed out free in casinos) but no big ones.

Incidentally, there are far fewer poker players in Sweden, Denmark and Finland than in the UK, but all these countries seems to produce plenty of big winners in tournaments and cash games (an area you ignore in your post).

Of course there are 18-year-old college kids playing online poker. They're just not as good or as successful as their European or American counterparts. That's why you don't hear so much about them.

I guess, what I'm saying is, that for an 'insider', you don't really know what you're talking about.

We don't hand our magazine out free, it is sold in all the major high street newsagents and is very profitable. Last issue we featured articles from three guys from CardRunners, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Marc Goodwin, Sorel Mizzi, Vicky Coren, John Tabatabai and Julian Thew, so it's a pretty respected title in the poker industry.

And I never actually mentioned anything about European players, because this article was about British players and American players. So save your comments for a different thread.

So how many copies does your big magazine sell?

I mentioned European players as a means of putting into context the general standard of British players. The only context you employed was to say that it's a smaller market than the US. Surely, it's pertinent to note that while it's a smaller market than the US, it's a bigger market than the Scandi countries. And yet, they produce more successful players.

More successful in what? At least two British players are up over $2m online in 2008. I doubt each of the Scandinavian countries have more than two players up that much online. There are no Scandinavian players up more than $1m on highstakesdb this year. Below the highest levels it's very hard to tell as there's no way of telling how much people have made in cash games.

Well, you picked out two very successful players. I was talking about a general trend which indicates that players from those countries win more money than those from Britain.

I think there’s a lack of desire to learn and study in the UK. An unwillingness to put the hours in grind your way from the bottom up. It’s not restricted to poker. It occurs in many aspects of British life as people have bought into the get rich/famous quick mentality. The idea of working towards a goal is an anathema to many people who’ve been duped into thinking that an appearance on a reality TV show is the pinnacle of human achievement.

You only have to look at the abject state of the UK poker forums to get an idea of the state of play of British poker. They’re generally populated by cretins who have little or no understanding of poker strategy and show no desire to improve themselves.

sigh

lol stereotypaments

When the thread drifted from British poker to other sports, that's when the thread was over.