Proof of the popularity of Poker in Ireland

Drakar

Google Trends is a google tool which shows trends in search term popularity. If you look for the search trend on 'Poker', you see a nice graph, but in addition you can see that Ireland ranks number 4 in searching for this term (Norway Sweeden and Denmark are ahead of us). It seems pretty amazing that we manage to make the list so highly...
http://www.google.com/trends?q=poker

sock.rocker*

do they work it out by search engine entries? nd yea, didnt think we'd be so high

luckylucky

I presume Google trends works on a per capita or percentage of internet users in the country. If so, not sure why this is surprising . Ireland has always been big into poker and gambling in general. No surprise at seeing the 3 Scandie countries up there too, the only slight surprise for me is that the Finns aren't in the top 10 too.

sock.rocker*

luckylucky wrote:

per capita or percentage of internet users in the country.

understandable when u say that

Drakar

The About page suggests the results are normalised, so we are seeing the results as a percentage of Irish search terms. So it does just suggest that we are more poker oriented than many other countries.

Interestingly you can also drill down inside the country, so you can see that in Kilkenny poker forms a higher percentage of google searches than other parts of the country.

luckylucky

I check the UK regions also, and Northern Ireland is at the bottom, kind of surprised at that but then again I suppose with the higher percentage of puratanical religious people there who I would imagine would detest poker, it might drop the percentages.

Also I was surprised that Romania was at number 8, I have seen a few romanians playing poker online, but not many.

Linford

I typed a number of random words into the search - porn, boards, horses, dogs, football, soccer, rugby, jobs, athletics, work and in every single search Ireland was in the top 5.... maybe we just use google a lot more per capita than other countries, or maybe its to do with the fact that they are english words...

DeVore

Small country, highly globalised (on the Globalised Index we rank second after Singapore)... the small pop base means more volatile per-capita calculations.

Also, poker has been part of the fabric of Irish society for a long long time. We are a nation of remarkable competitive games players (Ireland is one of the worlds most active board-games countries for example). We buy more playstations AND playstation games then any other country in the world (PC), including the mighty Japan!

DeV.

kakak1

Drakar wrote:

Interestingly you can also drill down inside the country, so you can see that in Kilkenny poker forms a higher percentage of google searches than other parts of the country.

that's only because they are a little slow up there and have to check several times before they take in what the're reading

bops

kakak1 wrote:

that's only because they are a little slow up there and have to check several times before they take in what the're reading

excellent point!! dumb cats

now back on topic plz

robinlacey

DeVore wrote:

Small country, highly globalised (on the Globalised Index we rank second after Singapore)

DeV.

what does globalised mean here?

Goodluck2me

robinlacey wrote:

what does globalised mean here?

possibly to do with the amount of FDI and communication/commercial dealing with countries across the world.

DeVore

robinlacey wrote:

what does globalised mean here?

Latest figures are only in for 2004

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=2494&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2494

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/wwwboard/g-index.php

excerpt: Meanwhile, Western Europe suffered a significant downturn in levels of economic integration, even as political, social, and technological integration continued to climb. FDI to and from the United Kingdom, for instance, dropped by more than 75 percent and to and from Germany by 70 percent. Portfolio investments to Italy were off by more than 50 percent, and even London’s financial center saw portfolio inflows dive from $258 billion to $64 billion—a 75 percent reduction. As a result, Western Europe was the only major world region to see its Globalization Index scores decline from last year’s levels (with nine of the 15 countries in the region posting lower overall scores). Finland, France, and Spain all dropped out of the top 10 this year for economic integration.

One country that survived the storm was Ireland, which for the second consecutive year ranked as the world’s most global country. Despite difficult times for the Irish economy, the strength of Ireland’s portfolio capital flows and its continued investment in high-tech industries actually deepened the country’s integration with the rest of the world. In 2000, Ireland ranked as the world’s fourth-largest recipient (and third-largest contributor) of portfolio capital. By 2001, Ireland had overhauled its financial services regulatory framework, introducing a single regulatory authority responsible for issues across the full range of the industry. At the same time, barriers to entry in financial services fell, due both to the effects of the single currency and to new legislation allowing any institution licensed by an EU member state to set up shop in Ireland. The impact on portfolio capital flows has been dramatic—an increase from $80 billion to $91 billion in 2001, even as France and the United Kingdom saw inflows tumble by as much as 75 percent.

Ireland has other strong links to the global economy, based largely on its heavy investment in high-tech and information technologies. The country increased trade levels in 2001, one of only a handful of countries to thwart the global trade slowdown. On the strength of robust exports of computer components, electronics, and medical and pharmaceutical products, Ireland ranked third behind Singapore and Malaysia in total trade as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Its Internet infrastructure continued to grow, and countrywide the number of secure servers increased from 337 to 500. Ireland was also the world’s most talkative nation, owing to the heavy traffic into its call centers as well as the strong growth in outgoing international calls.

robinlacey

interesting stuff,cheers tom

DeVore

I'm not sure I totally buy the "Ireland on top of globalisation" message. They use various criteria that I think have various holes in them.
A case of "lies, damned lies and statistics" perhaps

Getting back to poker, from being involved in some form of game playing in Ireland from Gaelcon (board games) to computer games (Quake national team) to poker it wouldnt suprise me at all if we had the highest per capita number of players, perhaps outside US and Sweden. We are a nation so obsessed with games-playing that it doesnt even seem weird to us.

DeV.

ZZR1100

[QUOTE= to computer games (Quake national team)
DeV.[/QUOTE]

So what .every1 knows Duke Nukem 3d was better.



We are also 4th for sheep and 3rd for porn

RoundTower

Linford wrote:

I typed a number of random words into the search - porn, boards, horses, dogs, football, soccer, rugby, jobs, athletics, work and in every single search Ireland was in the top 5.... maybe we just use google a lot more per capita than other countries, or maybe its to do with the fact that they are english words...

DeVore wrote:

Small country, highly globalised (on the Globalised Index we rank second after Singapore)... the small pop base means more volatile per-capita calculations.

excellent observations