Comments on: Jews and Poker

By: dpodan

dpodan — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:31:12 +0000

France. Like many of our world wide extended family we arrived in 1949, Moms, Pops, my sister, two pieces of luggage and fifteen dollars. My father thought he was rich. He spoke three languages and none of them were English. My mother spoke three languages and none of them were English. On any given day for the first three years they would have packed it in and returned to France. He was a master barber but because he wasn’t licensed he could not practice. He spent the rest of his life as a skilled manual laborer. The streets are paved with gold in America if you have a street map showing you the way. In Europe before the war there was no such thing as credit. If you did not have the money you couldn’t buy it. Here the entire economy was run on your promise to pay back what ever you could get someone to lend you. When he died at the age of eighty four his children were provided higher educations as were his grand children. Only in America. He waited, he worked and along the way found a road map.

By: Suber

Suber — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:33:23 +0000

dpodan – Where are you from?

By: dpodan

dpodan — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:06:35 +0000

Suber, you got me. I did say insert any minority and you did. The non-convert american muslim population is probably smaller than the American Jewish population. The convert population is probably substantially larger than the Jewish convert population. The numbers outside of the the United states skewes in favor of the Islamic population. The American muslim population is not very homogenius. Genetically the Jews of the middle east and the muslims of the middle east are genetic cousins. I am not sure whether there are religious sanctions against gambling within the muslim dogma.
Initally I stopped in to see whether there was a list of the top ranked players and to see how many were Jewish. The inquiry was based on curiosity because I initially believed that there were a disproportionate number of Jewish players at the final tables of many of the tournaments. Apparently religious affiliation is not thought to be very important because I was unable to find such a list. A naturalized immigrant.

By: Suber

Suber — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:22:18 +0000

I agree with you that the vast majority of Jews don’t play poker. And I would agree that the vast majority of Jews aren’t wealthy. However, I am talking about these attributes relative to the general population, and from what I’ve observed it seems that the Jews are disproportionately higher. It is here where I’m not sure whether we are in agreement or not.

I don’t know what the statistics are, but I would bet that if you compared the average wealth or IQ of your American Jew to the average wealth of the American nonJew or nonJew in general, it would be higher on the Jewish side. I’m sure this is easy to prove. The “Bell Curve”, e.g. shows the statistics with respect to IQ.

To take a more concrete example, consider Nobel Prize winners. There are certainly more nonJews who have won this prize than Jews. However, when you take these numbers and compare them to the population of Jews and nonJews, it is staggering the proportion of Jews who have won this prize.

I have a feeling that the Nobel Prize situation is analogous to the poker situation.

You write, “Step back from the page and insert any minority label in place of Jew or Jewish and honestly weigh the comments. You may have another take on the comments offered by the participants.” I don’t think this is true. Consider, e.g., “American Muslims”. They are certainly a minority. And compared to Muslims in the rest of the world, I would be that they are doing disproportionately better financially speaking. And I wouldn’t be surprise if they are doing disproportionately better than the average nonMuslim American. However, I would bet that the number of American nonMuslims who play high stakes poker and are good at it are proportionately lower than the nuber of Jews who are. If I’m wrong, I think this would be an interesting result.

By: dpodan

dpodan — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:23:12 +0000

Suber it is always more difficult to prove a negative. The vast majority of all Jews don’t play poker. The vast majority of all Jews are not disproportionately more wealthy than the majority population. Some Jews are more intelligent than some non Jews. We are a hyper small community so that when one of us is successful it reflects disproportionately. My guess is that more Jews played a variation of dominoes hundreds of years before they ever played poker. Step back from the page and insert any minority label in place of Jew or Jewish and honestly way the comments. You may have another take on the comments offered by the participants.