This Slashdot thread enticed me because of the subject matter, online poker (which Online wrote about two weeks ago).
"I recently won a satellite tournament at Full Tilt Poker for entry into the World Poker Tour Final at Foxwoods Casino," writes the correspondent. "I picked up poker as a hobby about 4 months ago, and consider myself a decent player, maybe due to programming experience (analytical thinking). Any other programmers/computer people find that they can play poker better than the average person because of their computer experience?"
There's something to be said for his thesis - after all, good programming takes a certain ability to crunch numbers and analyse. But probably anybody who has mathematical aptitude could give poker a go - particularly in games where the best players are usually the conservative ones.
One commenter responded: "I think that programmers tend to think that they are smarter than the average person".
And I think there's something in that too; all of us, whatever our line of work, tend to think that there are things that set us apart from everyone else. Most professionals would like to consider themselves smarter than average: a programmer might like to think they're better at maths, a lawyer might like to think they're better at analysis, a journalist might like to think they're better with words (*cough*) - in the end, though, your job doesn't define you, or your abilities.
After all, if all geeks were good at poker, they'd win everything.
