Different country = different play style ?

I brought this up with my buddies and we think it could be helpful at a fresh table if you had an idea of how the country they are from gave some tells to the type of player they might be. I started watching the play and what country the players were from and it may be valuable, but like I said only as a first impression. Does anyone think that makes sense or has any input about this. I wonder if other countries think the US has a playing style in paticualr? I hope they all dont think we are Phil Helmuths, lol!

People are individuals, with different styles and are at different stages of learning. If you see 2 russian maniacs it would be rather costly (and stupid) to assume everyone from Russia plays that way lol.

Honestly when I played cash games almost anyone not from the US was pretty solid, most of the donkeys were from USA lol... there are exceptions of course but I would be pretty weary about any foreign player until they prove you otherwise.

Once you see the person is from the USA, you know they are a boorish American fish.

IMO the most useful information to be gleaned from someone's country is the time at their location.

E.g. If it's 2am at the weekend they are more likely to be drunk and playing for fun than if it's 10am on a weekday.

Agree, but in some countries they get drunk more often.

I think it's not very helpfull information, because most players not playing when they are drunked even if it's 2am

Well there's definitely nothing to ascertain from origins of a player but one thing is pretty cool. Search youtube for how other countries count their money and how other countries deal cards...

Those are pretty interesting to see!

To me there seems to be some correlation between where a person is from and how they play. However, there are of course exceptions to this. One thing I have heard mentioned often is that northern European players seem to be more aggressive than others.

I have never met an unaggressive Russian

I was playing a fair bit of poker in Macau (China) recently. I noticed that very few Asian players would raise the big blind. It was all about seeing the flop and then going hard if you hit. Granted many of them were new players.
I took the same strategy and planned to slow-play my monster hands against the more agressive post-flop players. Sadly I had zero luck there and couldn't hit a card to save my life. I ended up losing a lot of money paying blinds.

I don think ppl from US are donkeys. i am not from USA but there is a reason why u feel like there are a lot of donkeys. There are a lot of ppl in USA and usualy most of the ppl on poker servers are donkeys so the big percentage is from USA. Plus lots of ppl from USA afford to deposit 100 $ to play poker.
Most of the ppl from eastern Europe, Asia, Africa that play poker are usualy players that made their bankrolls from freerolls so they know some poker. I am from Romania so i know what I am saying. I can afford to deposit 2-3k to play poker but i won't do it. I am an engineer that learned and worked a lot in his life for his money and always i said that if u cannot make your bankrool from zero to 1k u cannot make it from 100$ to 1k. And there are a lot of ppl like me. By the way. Negreanu is romanian.

i totally agree with swingro, i am from romania too, i never deposited any money, all the money i have i achieved with hard work, first from freerols, many hours of grinding at 1c/2c.

also i believe that usa players seems really bad because there are so many of them.

"IMO the most useful information to be gleaned from someone's country is the time at their location.

E.g. If it's 2am at the weekend they are more likely to be drunk and playing for fun than if it's 10am on a weekday."


I played for a while, as much as possible, on table where most of the players where from the same time zone, always from 11 PM onwards for them, especially weekends, thinking that most would/could/probably had been drinking. Some or my worst sessions Then I played drunk myself thinking "what they can do I can do better" Those were even worse

every person has different types of play no matter where they are from

I agree with the guy here, every person play with different strategie, and the country that he's, don't influency in the way that he play.

Well.......... i just saw Phil Helmuth and some other pros talking about this, Phil had (of course) an opinion on every country, so did the other pros. Phil said Germany is conservative, Ireland likes to bluff and norther Europeans are loose LOL! They said many players from a paticular country follow their countries pros and play like they do, so a pro from one country can be an example for (not all) but some of their country people.

So how about an American, who now lives in Germany, and has spent time and/or worked in Brazil, N.Africa, and pretty much every Country on the European continent....... Me.... I guess I am conservative, loose, and like to bluff..... OMG WHO AM I??????? lol

I saw this too... all of the pros on there seemed to agree that there was a certain style of play depending on where each person was from. Yea everyone is different, but to say that there are not some similarities between people from the same region is, imo somewhat ignorant

There does seem to be some link between the playing style and country IMHO.

The Eastern European for example seem to be (generally) very aggressive. Of cos doesnt mean that they all are aggressive as they are individuals and each have thier own playing style.

On our local site I have taking to asking people where else they play (most are South African on the site) and from that you can get a fair estimation of thier playing style. If they play full tilt, bodog, party poker etc they either solid or a bit fishy, from CD Poker etc and they over value thier hands, bluff way too often etc. Its not a hard and fast rule but it does help.

RAT

Time is important as to where they are in the world, and just because ppl are from the US doesnt mean they have money to blow

Of course there's a link. Though we have special individuals everywhere the climate and environment can surely shape their playing style...Look at the agressive russians, the gambling hot-headed middle-easterns, the cold and slow nordic people...but it's just an expectation not a certainty!