The cultural awareness of poker players

Last August I wrote a post titled, "The geopolitical awareness of poker players." It might be worth rereading that as background for these two stories.

During a session at the Venetian with Cardgrrl last month, there was a young guy who thought he knew everything at the far end of the table. [Edit: Dangling modifier alert! But I decided it's amusing enough to leave it as originally written.] We also had at the table a pleasant young man who had introduced himself as "Wolfgang," and who had a classic German accent. But for reasons that remain unfathomable to me, oh-so-smart young guy put in his guess that Wolfgang was from--are you ready for this?--Finland. Yes, Finland. Excellent guess, sir!

I was reminded of that story today. Again I was at the Venetian. Two seats to my right was a gentleman of classic Indian-subcontinent appearance and accent. That is, one might reasonably guess him to be from either India or Pakistan, but certainly not, oh, I dunno, FINLAND. India was strongly favored over Pakistan if you happened to notice that his card protector was a very large silver coin, on one side of which was writing that appeared to be Hindi, and on the other side of which was the figure of a multi-armed Hindu god, flanked by elephants. His wife was sitting subserviently beside/behind him, wearing a sari. I'm no expert on Asian languages--I couldn't tell spoken Hindi from Dravidian or Punjabi or Pashto if my life depended on it--but if what he and his wife were speaking were not one of the major languages of India or Pakistan, I'd be a monkey's uncle.

Which, now, is enough background for you to see why I wanted to run and hide in shame at being a fellow American with the guy who casually asked this gentleman sitting beside him, "So, are you Spanish?"