[four eight suited]

Clearly a VERY shortsided view of sociology is held by your responders to this post. I think its funny that a forum filled with psychology responses would snub the whole field of sociology like that. You ever notice those tables where everyone is always limping in? You think everyone individually has rationally decided that they want to limp in to every pot? I think this has great relevance to the Asch conformity experiments. Poker tables, while certainly filled with unique individuals, clearly have a certain group dynamic to them, thus are well within the realm of sociology.

How about Erving Goffmans Dramaturgy theory? It is essentially described by the 'all the world's a stage and all of us are merely actors' quote. It would describe how players fit into their roles as TAGs or LAGs or weak/passive or whatever.

Hundreds of pages could easily be written applying many of salient theories concerning the Symbolic Interactionist perspective and their application to the poker society and even to individual tables.

I think mike caro might think there is some significant sociology occuring at the poker table. How could he possible group players so accurately into so few models? While controversial, mike offers a depiction of player types by race, an approach taken by many sociologists.



Maybe not so common sense? Sorry, kinda defensive about the whole sociology thing, sure it was easy major at duke, but I guess I learned a few things too.