See, your mistake is you make it way too obvious. Trolling threads with moronic statements just to get people mad so you can laugh at them can be fun, but you'll never have great success when you go this far.

It's a trade-off - the more stupid you make your comments, the more people will realise you're trying to hook them.

And if the perfect amount of stupidity to maximise your ROI is around 50, then your posts are 90+.

Swedish players don't care about going broke because their social security system is the best in the world. They are basically freerolling at the nosebleeds

Try a European network. Scandis are the biggest nits ever.

I know this thread is like 2 months old but I'm surprised to see everyone pretty much outright dismissing the idea that the low amount of religious belief in Scandinavia might be in any way connected to the (seemingly) high amount of good poker players.

It should be pretty obvious that there might be some correlation, even if not a direct causal relationship between lack of religious belief and poker skill.

Essentially, religious belief is a form of superstition, and in poker, having a superstitious mindset will generally not win you money.

Therefore, it stands to reason that growing up in a fairly realist society, without having any superstitious belief systems ingrained in you from an early age, would result in a mindset more conducive to playing good poker. Meaning you could find it easier to view a game with a significant randomizing element objectively, rather than feeling the world is against you when you're running bad.

Of course other factors such as good social security play a part, and there is probably not a direct connection anyway - rather, the same realist mindset that is less likely to result in religious belief is probably also more likely to result in a good poker game.

But it seems perfectly logical to me that a country with a lower incidence of superstitious belief would also have a higher incidence of skilled players of a game in which superstition is not a desirable mindset.

great troll. if you guys were not supplying the nazi's with equipment/food and ammo the war would have finished after 18 months! you were selling to both sides before you realised your market was gonna fade so you needed to step in! not yank hating, infact really like americans in general, but wow mistakenaments.

+1

I would disagree thats the reason tbh. Not really that religious in England tbh. I don't personally even know anyone who goes to church if its not for a wedding.

having said that looking at this list top and bottom and keeping religion in mind makes your argument look more interesting.

http://www.anskypoker.com/2010/04/5-...ries-in-hu-nl/

Can some1 translate this nice Swedish guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As95Jf-zIW4

I'd guess the correlation is: Athiesm is logical. Good poker = logical.

Religion is superstitious and based around faith/hopes/wishes. Bad poker is pretty much all of these things.

Like Sweeeeeeden, go sweeeeeeden go sweeeden

Also notice the snus under his lip, gives us swedes power.

These countries have short daylight hours for prolonged parts of their year,this has been used to explain their higher than norm suicide rates.My guess would be that this effects views on risk taking,and going broke is a minor glitch in the scheme of things. obv the above is all bs but u never know.

I suspect Finland being at the top of the international Maths leagues has more relevance than their atheism to be honest...

They have a superb education system. I met a Finnish farmer in Lapland about my age once. He spoke 7 languages and was a fascinating guy.

I thought Finns weren't Scandies though. Their quite mad language is one of the few non Indo-European ones in Europe, quite different from the Germanic ones spoken in Scandinavia. Same group as Hungarian and Estonian as I recall...

As I remember, they tend to be smaller and darker than say the Swedes and have a wicked sense of humour.

Also Mannerheim's performance in the Winter War was quite simply kick-ass and the main reason Finland never fell under the Iron Curtain...

Sure thing.

I'd say the mainreason is the daylight. When you have a ton of pale nerds who have nothing better to do than sit all day at their mom's basement, few of 'em are bound to brake through. They make sick runs to the top 'cos lets face it, its internetz mani, you lose reality of its worth.

Really? That makes no sense to me. Atheism, as classically defined means a person who believes there is no God - however that is defined. Concomitantly, they also believe there is no afterlife. Now, people are free to have whatever beliefs they wish, but to actively believe in this absence of things others believe they have evidence or experience of, with nothing on your side but your own statement of belief, isn't actually logical. Agnosticism is logical without personal experience, but atheism is just another unproven belief system.

For instance, the whole premise of the thread is that a certain subset of poker players defined only by their country of origin, are somehow as a group, better players than all others or all other subsets.

So far, I don't see compelling evidence that the premise is correct, so I'm not sure discussing why it would be true when no one knows it is, is logical, either.

Also: dictators, repression, wars and self-righteous revisionism suck.

errr... it's obviously because they're Norsemen. they're ****ing VIKINGS

on a serious note, i think there is an interesting question in why scandinavia and sweden in particular have pdoduced such amazing talents in Poker, Metal/Rock, winter sports, ???

As posted before:
COLD --> ANGRY --> AGGRO

imo

Patriotism in this thread makes me lol

lmao. I think you were talking to or about a Saami. They're different from Finns or Swedes with their own heritage and culture. They're the native inhabitants of northern parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway. There's no mentionable difference in length or fairness among Finns and Swedes

I believe you meant "height." (I can't imagine the culture is so different that the length differences are not being mentioned.)

ding ding ding!

its pretty much this

Including Finnland in Scandinavia tilts me hard

I just want it noted that I hate all of you.

I believe many of the writers on this thread don't really understand how much better the school system in scandinavia (including Finland) is compared to countries like U.S, England, France etc. This is the biggest single reason.

One thing I'd like to add to all the ones that has come up this far in this thread is the long distances. When it's 150 miles to nearest neighbor, you rather stay home and play poker.

Also poker skills and traffic culture seems to correlate very much between countries/cultures.

I am considered "ultra religious" by today's standards (i go to church almost every sunday) and have been making a living from poker for almost 3 years now fwiw... pretty happy with my results