Given all the talk about Judaism and poker in one of the other posts, I thought I'd share this funny story from one of the first times I ever played NL hold 'em.
I'm from Philadelphia and wound up going to college in central Pennsylvania. It's a very rural area with a pretty culturally conservative population. It also has almost no Jews or other minorities. On my campus of 1300 students, there are about 19 Jews and 12 blacks. I think there is one Latino guy and maybe four or five Asians.
Many of the people at my school haven't had a lot of exposure to diversity and can say some pretty boneheaded things. A friend of mine knew I was interested in playing poker and invited me to his poker game. As I was a freshman, he was really the only person I knew at the game.
It was NL hold 'em and while I didn't know anything about the game I still did pretty well. I think sometimes you just have a knack for card games that can be developed with study. Anyway, there was this one guy who was telling a lot of anti-Semitic jokes. Very offensive stuff that I won't repeat here.
I kept my cool and didn't mention my last name (almost as Jewish as Barry Greenstein's). We got into a huge hand (for those stakes) and I put in a huge bluff on the river (most likely with no regards for pot odds, position, or anything that I would now consider important).
He was wearing sunglasses (of course) and pulled down his shades. "You trying to bluff me" he asked. I responded "Well, my last name is ----------. You've been making jokes all night about how cheap we are and I wouldn't put in that big a raise if I didn't have something." He turned bright red and got pretty flustered. He threw his hand into the muck and I proceeded to win most of the rest of his stack.
It was only around $5-$10, but it was the best money I've ever won at poker.