Spot the Sucker - Don't be a Fish

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The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook by Dan Paymar, Donna Harris, and Mason Malmuth defines fish as: a poker player who lacks many poker skills. Skilled poker players look for these "soft targets".

In the poker movie Rounders the character Mike McDermott says: "Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker."

Acording to this Computer world article a recents study says Almost half of U.S. residents couldn't identify 'phishing' e-mail scams

Titled "Open to Exploitation: American Shoppers Online and Offline," the study was released today (download PDF). It involved 1,500 adult U.S. Internet users who were asked true-or-false questions about topics such as Web site privacy policies and retailers' pricing schemes. Respondents on average failed the test, answering on average fewer than 7 out of 17 questions correctly.

Interviews for the study, conducted between early February and mid-March, yielded some findings that the authors consider alarming. Those findings include:

  • Seventy-five percent of respondents wrongly believe that if a Web site has a privacy policy, it won't share their information with third parties.
  • Almost half of the respondents, 49%, couldn't identify "phishing" scam e-mail messages, which information thieves dress up to look as though they come from a legitimate company, such as a bank or store, to lure users to enter sensitive information. Requested information might include Social Security numbers, passwords and bank account numbers.
  • Sixty-two percent of respondents didn't know that an online store can simultaneously charge different prices for the same item based on information it has on different shoppers, a practice that can make users into victims of what study authors call "price discrimination."