A Poker analogy from the SF Chronicle

[El Barto]

"Politicians, like professional poker players, lie too well.

If international politics were like one big game of Texas hold'em, then this can be said about U.S. Iraq policy: President Bush didn't have a hand.

But he sure bet on it like he held the best cards in the hole -- two aces, A-A, pocket rockets.

Bush sent a few rockets and U.S. troops to fight his war. But now his hand has been exposed.

And he had nothing.

Just a costly flop of a war."

Bush's Bluff (http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/guillermo/)

[bholdr]

he also needs to learn when to lay that sucker down when it's clear that he's getting called.

don't you all love how mainstream that poker's become, that a writer can expect the vast majority of his readers to get there refrences? Viva poker!

[Broken Glass Can]

Leave it to a liberal to get it all wrong. As if we can only proceed if we have pocket rockets. Once again expecting perfection is the enemy of the good.

[cardcounter0]

shhhhhh! not while they are stacking your chips.

[bholdr]

ah, but charging as if we had the AA with the 78s that we did... aggression has its limits. limping with a moderate hand was the correct move, instead, we went all in and hoped for a fold, but got a bunch of callers instead.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Bush's ploy is the correct play because the UN and the rest of the world are passive.

[bholdr]

one shouldn't bluff into loose passive players. if they were weak-tight, on the other hand...

this metaphor's getting pretty thin.

[lastchance]

Poker Metaphor doesn't work here. It's just another way about looking at the big picture, the game theory one.

Not all matrices look like a poker matrix. I think this one could look a lot differently.

You've got to see how strong Saddam is, how strong the insurgence is, likelihood of WMD's, and a lot of other factors. There are multiple players in this hand, and you do have a better hand than they do, however, there's a lot of game theory stuff here that isn't poker-related.