Could someone explain why racist generalizations still have a place of dignity here in 2022?
Is it because money won playing poker in our infantile post 2005-dreams is worth everything and stereotypes are true and all of the other Mike Caro-esque racism that plagues HH posts is really ok because *EV*?
"Few blacks play to win" can Mike Caro really say that?
So why are we allowed to write HH with race stereotypes then?
This site isn't owned by dumb old white men anymore right?

I'll let this stay open for now as long as it doesn't drift too much more into troll bait. Garick and IRTM, don't wait for me to close it if in your judgement it becomes troll bait.

FWIW, Mike Caro was not associated with 2+2.

Great first post looking forward to seeing how this one develops

My 100% non troll answer:

If, when a HH is posted, the OP gives all information, pertinent or not, to the audience that he/she is able to. This may include someone’s race, age, or gender. As much as possible, a complete picture of the situation and action is attempted to be painted.

But that said, some posters may find that information superfluous and not include. That is your prerogative as the presumptive OP. Include what you want.

Also in before the inevitable lock.

Because those labels offer more information. Not much more information, and not reliable information, but still, some. Race is an indicator (though not a determinator) of likely cultural background, more reliably when it is mixed with other indicators. Cultural background is an indicator (but not a determinator) of views on and approaches to gambling. These, in turn, are an indicator of poker playing style. The info is thus several layers of implication deep and each of those layers is tenuous, so it's not super-valuable info, but it is info and can have value when mixed with other indicators.

How is describing someone's race inherently racist? It is information. What the observer does with that information COULD be racist, but that hardly matters from a poker HH pov. I make generalization based on age, sex, attire, speech patterns and a slew of other tidbits of info before I start nailing down tendencies for a player. Why wouldn't I mention all of these things in my post?

FWIW it is also better story telling to give more details. The reader is more likely to feel like they are in the shoes of the OP when they have max details.

Thank you for not locking this thread I guess. No it isn't troll bait it's 100% time to stop using these monikers and has been for 15 years. I think what attracts quality posters to this site still is the good discussion that does occur. And yes reading Malmuth and various white guys talk about Abortion ignorantly etc or buying hookers openly was annoying and behavior that should not occur. That's stopped but using these monikers still floats

The 2001-2020 forum rationalization has been what Garick at least tried to somewhat respectfully write out but has numerous holes in its logic that should be pushed back on. It's now 2022 and the culture is there to stop writing about people's race in a poker HH because *information* that will allow you to make more money. That's still the only justified logic for why it might be Ok. It's not Ok it's just word manipulation. Information sounds nicer than racist assumptions
To metaphorize further beyond Mike Caro's book quotes...
I would like to know the races of my potential office co-workers when I apply for a job? That will give me information on how they culturally act and whether I want to work with them on a daily basis. When i find out lots of __________ people work in an office, I assume the culture is not for me because they are such fake liars in workplace settings. I only work with honest people. It's just my right as a human to judge others on their race and make assumptions about how they act and to both think and entitled-ly state those notices aloud

There are less "Black" and "Hispanic" labels because people feel shame. The main ones I see are Asian and "Caucasian." It might be easier to get away with saying racist stuff about Asian people than Black/Hispanic but AAPI racism/hate is real and there just shouldn't be racial labeling of others pretty much ever

If others agree with me please chime in I love reading TwoPlusTwo but can't stand still seeing these monikers and the "justification" people give for it

Personally I find the descriptions lazy as much as anything else, because really they don't convey much information.

As someone half Asian, I kinda laugh when people describe a player as Asian, because you know 5 Bil people are all the same - Like the 25 year old MIT 3rd Generation Indian Kid is gonna play exactly like the 1st Generation 60 Year Vietnamese guy, because you know they are both "Asian".

Also has anyone actually done any research on this over large sample sizes? I suspect the differences in play are way less than people think they are, given that our perceptions are almost certainly driven by biases and stereotypes where we suffer from seeking confirming info bias.

Yes exactly. The half-examined logic of he's "Asian" therefore gambly or old man tight or whatever the poster is trying to convey has a huge ridiculous range anyways and even if it was clear wouldn't be OK. Acceptable comments should be E.g. Player has a high VPIP. Player does not 3B a lot. Player comes off as recreational, player is dressed well, player is wearing sweat pants and track suit and has earphones in. Those are observation of behavior based comments not observation of race. Even if all ______ people of some race or cultural in-grouping did play the same would it be ok to assume/comment? NO

Noting someone's race is not racism. As the_dude said, what people do with that info could be racist, but the info itself is not.

We are not going to disallow that info, anymore than we would disallow info about tattoos or age, or dress. We will (and already have) disallowed attacks based on that or other demographic info.

And please remember that this is not a politics and society forum. This discussion should only be about noting race as part of HHs, not about the wider 2+2 fora.

Generally, I would argue that if you have real reads on a player, this info is irrelevant. It's only tenuous relevance is if you are talking about an unknown and trying to establish probabilities based on hints like how they handle their chips, whether they know the dealer, and their demographic info.

These are two separate statements:

1) stereotypes are useful for making predictions about people
2) we should ban noticing stereotypes because it’s offensive

#1 appears to be objectively true. Arguing against a strawman of #1, like “all Asians play the same”, is misleading because no one’s saying that — just that people’s race/gender/age/other characteristics convey non-zero information about their play style. (Also, even if you just aren’t convinced that player profile info is useful, is that really a good reason to ban other people from mentioning it in posts?)

#2 is up for debate. I happen to disagree. But it’s totally unrelated to whether the information is useful.

Also I’ll go out on a very solid limb and say that even when Mike Carp’s book was published it was considered racist by reasonable people.

That’s clearly not what posters are thinking about when they describe villains (and people give age, gender and other descriptors as they feel necessary).

The challenge is people way overweight it when they are new to a table because of their biases. As I said it's very unclear if anyone has actually properly studied differences in players over large sample sizes.

The absolute best read for establish probabilities prior is Ed Miller. Going in to a new table you should apply Bayesian Priors. This is by far and away the best predictor, not small sample sizes, or player's race. We're simply not smart enough to apply a Baysian prior and then make an adjustment on Race (even if that did matter, which is as I said is far from clear).

As you point out it is unclear if anyone has actually done the research to know whether or not race effects poker playing. This equally means there is no research to prove that it doesn't. Is there accredited research on age? Should we apply the standards some wish to impose on race to age based descriptions? Should we require accredited research on playing differences to any description in a hand history?

What people do with that information is on them? More wordsmithing over how naming someone’s race without their permission judging them by it in any way is an inherently wrong act. The reasons for that I am not going to argue it’s obvious. I won’t use the word racist anymore since that triggers a typical cop-out “we’re not the KKK” defense of further wordsmithing. My main argument is that it is wrong to note someone’s race when discussing them outside of very specific contexts like identifying them for a drivers license or in some welcome way by them. It also leads to unspoken and harmful stereotypes being used but isn’t the only reason.

It’s also a lot of work to police as mods and against current tribalism it appears

Race shouldn’t be noted it’s an inherently wrong thing to do. I think the spirit of describing a play style isn’t wrong it just needs to be clear and not racially linked which can be tough too. Eg he has a Paul Phua, Bill Klein call down style

just quietly change the policy to objective observations and stated assumptions about play style only outside of race

I’m going to start a new poker forum called 2+3 and there will be no player descriptions. That way we won’t assume that what looks like a man is a man and offend anyone. We also won’t mis-age anyone either.

There's nothing wrong with describing what someone looks like. If you thought it was racist to do so, why did you describe you're villain as an "Indian dude"?

I'm assuming you aren't racist against Indians, so just replace "Indian dude" with "Black dude", "Asian Dude", "White dude" or "Yellow dude". Rest assured it doesn't mean anything negative at all.





/

So mentioning race is self-evidently wrong:

And yet it's OK - is that when we mention certain races but not others?:

And with this we have gone well beyond the strategy forum discussion level. Although this statement is highly debatable, this is not the place for it. Please take this to the politics and society forum.