There has long been an ongoing debate about which country can produce the best home grown talent when it comes to the game of poker. For this post, I am going to compare Sweden’s, Eric Friberg, a well known and respected younger player, to David ‘devilfish’ Ulliott, an English veteran in the game.
It is common knowledge in the poker world that Swedish players tend to have more aggressive tendencies towards their game compared to English players.
Is this a positive quality or could it be considered reckless play?
If Sweden’s population was as dense as England’s, would Swedish players be winning as many tournaments as their counterparts?
Below are the profiles of two famous and successful poker players, one Swedish and the other English.
Eric Friberg
Eric Friberg, 27, is one of the many established and professional Swedish poker players currently playing in the high stakes cash games and tournaments.
His style, typical of a Swedish player, is very aggressive. If you are not familiar with some poker terminology, the term ‘aggressive,’ in this context, means he likes to play a lot of hands, with a lot of chips, all of the time.
Friberg’s best accomplishment to date, is coming eighth in the 2006 World Series Of Poker main event. For this triumph, he took home just under $2,000,000 dollars.
Friberg also finished in 26th place in the Barcelona leg of the European Poker Tour and first in the Swedish Poker Challenge, earning $87,287 dollars.
Eric left his University studies to play Poker full time. He claims that it didn’t go too well at first but soon picked up. He has never had a proper job before and says he regrets not working earlier to help him appreciate the real value of money.
When asking him why Swedish players are so good? He replied: “We think a lot about poker and play smart”. He also explained: “There are many talented and skilled Swedish players with the potential to win an event like this. For example, the high-limit games on the Internet are owned by Swedish players these days.”
Dave Ulliott
Dave Ulliott, predominantly know as ‘The Devilfish,’ is arguably one of Britain’s best poker players and is definitely one of Britain’s best known.
Ulliott started out hosting his own poker nights and playing in other peoples’ houses. He rapidly developed his intuition of the game and was shortly taking his pals for reasonable amounts of money. He shortly found himself being excluded from games as his friends were sick of constantly losing their money to him.
He then moved on to playing in casinos and was a regular playing in the Victoria Casino in London. He liked to travel and play and was known to play poker in up to five difference cities in one day.
He grew up in a small council house in a working class area and throughout his early life spent spells in prison. At the height of his criminal activity he was part of a a safe-cracking team, targeting tobacconists, off-licenses and garages.
Ulliott won the first season of the World Poker Tour, outlasting 160 players and earning $589,175. He also finished third in the sixth season of the W.P.T classic championship event in 2007, earning $674,5000.
As of 2009, Ulliott’s total live tournament winnings exceed $5,600,000, making him the highest-earning British poker player.
Both of these players are highly successful and still continue to make massive amounts of money.
Is Friberg correct in saying that Swedish players “own the online game”?
Which of these do you consider to be the most successful? One has more career earnings but the other is a lot younger and has a promising future.
Please state your opinions below in the comment section.
Stephen Johnson (Jonk87)
Totally Sweden 