Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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The European players we are exposed to just play better poker. They don't pull donk moves, and they make +EV plays all the time.

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While I agree with the basic premise that the elite Scandanavian players seem to be doing disproportionately well in the big tourneys and high-stakes online games, there are plenty of Swedish/Norwegian donks as well. I've played many low-stakes tourneys at 24hPoker, where almost all of the players are Scandanavian. The €5 buy-in Swedish players are just as donkish as the $5 buy-in American players at Stars and Party. I've played Omaha H/L and 2-7 Triple Draw games at 24h where half the players don't even understand the rules of the game-not understanding that the low takes half the pot in a H/L game or not knowing that deuce-to-seven is a lowball game.

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

Compared to the size of the field, Scandinavian players do very well in European live tournaments. Not many of the good players go to US to play WPT etc., they are also very rare in WSOP.

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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The €5 buy-in Swedish players are just as donkish as the $5 buy-in American players at Stars and Party.

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Definately, they are even donkier. Poker boom now in Scandinavia, with people with starting out in $5-tournies without knowing if flush beats straight [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

As for Finland. Good education might have something to do with it.
The biggest thing at least for me is that poker offers very good way to earn money and big % of Scandinavian players play only for the money. It's very hard to earn over 50k from a normal job even before the taxes, and the taxes are just huge in finland, in some cases >50%.
Poker offers me way to make very nice money at young age tax-free.

So I think the money motivates us more then guys for example from USA.

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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Compared to the size of the field, Scandinavian players do very well in European live tournaments. Not many of the good players go to US to play WPT etc., they are also very rare in WSOP.

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Why would they when they get taxed at up to 30%!!! Unless they can find a British player to back them and thus avoid the tax then it doesn't seem worth their while.

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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By the way, why don't these guys win the WSOP, WPT, etc etc??? Even the EPT is won by dutch/brits/americans/others etc.


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Eh? There were 3 guys from Sweden in the top 20 at WSOP 2005. That's pretty good considering not many of us make the trip to Las Vegas to play. Martin De Knijff took down last years biggest WPT price.

EPT final tables this year:
Barcelona - 3 from Sweden, 1 from Denmark (some Gus Hansen [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]) and 1 from Finland
London - 1 from Norway
Baden - 3 from Norway, 1 each from Sweden, Denmark and Finland (6 Nordic players out of 8)
Dublin - Swedish players in 1st and 2nd place

EPT must be rigged or something...

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

So, are there any objective rankings of the average education or intelligence level of Scandanavians or Sweden/Norway vs. other parts of the world?

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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No doubt scandia players are better but unless they make up at least 1/4th of the field then there is no way that they occupy this many spots at the FT every week w/o colluding.

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A few years ago in NASCAR, some people were saying there is now way Jeff Gordon could be winning so often without cheating. They were checking his tires and all kinds of other crazy things but if my memory serves me, they never found anything at all.

Turns out him and his team were working harder and smarter than everybody else... I suspect that is what's going on here as well.

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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They are winning the top few places every week in the stars tourney. This is very unusual as they make up a small % of the contestants. They must be incredible players over there to overcome such variability and fare so well week after week.

Unreal,

Indy

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I have wondered about this for some time. I'm pretty sure the ratio of high finishes from Norwegian players for the Sunday Stars tournament is just way too high.

But of course we need data to back up these claims. Just to let you know that I have had the same question for the last 2 years.

Re: What\'s up with Swedish/Norweigen players???
 

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If you lived in that landof ice and snow, you'd play a lot more poker. And you'd take it much more seriously too, because poker may be your ticket out of there.

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Were you kidding there? Who needs a ticket out of the highest ranked countires in education, economy and pretty much every ranking known to man? Scandinavian countries are the prototype that every other country in the world should aspire to copy, even (and maybe especially) the great United State of America.