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Canada producing world class poker players
Canada's is fast producing some of the world’s best Texas Hold’em
players - Calvin Ayre, Evelyn Ng and Daniel Negreanu are taking over the
game.
"It's the weather," says Ayre, explaining the popularity of gambling in
Canada. This small-town kid recently turned a billionaire and made the
cover of Forbes magazine. Ayre says he's not joking about his theory.
"You can see the difference between the seasons. We even see spikes
during large winter snowstorms. People are forced indoors. In terms of
why so many Canadians gamble or play online I don't think there are any
other cultural explanations than that."
Negreanu, the World Poker Tour's player of the year in 2005 says, "There
was more poker going on in Toronto (during the '90s) than most places in
the world, other than California. There were 20 to 30 charity casinos to
play poker at any time" and agrees with Ayre’s theory.
Ng, a Toronto native and now living in Las Vegas is one of the top three
female players in the world. At 5-foot-11 and with smoldering looks Ng
has won many large pots with her biggest being $65,000 in the 2005 World
Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open.
It's not just high rollers who make the connection between Canadians and
gambling.
A 2001 survey of Ontarians showed that 84 per cent of adults had gambled
within the previous year with Ontarians gambling online at a much higher
rate than most other people in the developed world.
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