Fact Check

Tom Friedman needs to stop using poker analogies:

And this poker hand is seven-card stud, no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em.

If you don’t know, in Seven Card Stud, each player is dealt seven cards. Two down, then four up, then one down. There is betting after each card is dealt, starting with the first up card.

Texas Hold’em is an entirely different beast. Each player is dealt two cards, down. There is betting. Then “the flop,” where a set of three “community cards” is revealed. More betting. A fourth community card (“the turn”). A fifth community card (“the river”). Final bets, as each player tries to build the best possible hand, using any combinaion of his two hole cards and the community cards.

They’re both great games, but they have little in common other than the deck. Friedman would have made as much sense if he’d written, “And this ball game is full-contact football, the NBA’s All-Star Game.”

You’d think a major newspaper wouldn’t allow such silly errors.