“Where There’s Sea, There Are Pirates.”
— Greek Proverb
We are all members of the animal kingdom. As such, we are at the mercy and are bound by the rules of Mother Nature, who has a way of stacking the deck and playing certain card tricks on us all.
One such trick is that she assigns to almost every species a hit man, also known as a predator. Nature sanitizes this grim fact in the license of ecosystem balancing, a sort of express check-out lane from Hotel Earth if the joint gets overbooked or is short on food.
Another card trick Nature plays is to designate certain species as super predators, just to make sure that if the clumsy miss, these guys won’t.
Yet another trick is that Nature will, in dire emergencies, allow cannibalism among the same species. Yes, even man gets to eat man. Examples are many and factual: shipwrecked and snow-trapped folks doing a number on the weak, dead, or dying.
Leo, king of the jungle, has for his nemesis the lowly and diminutive, but power-jawed hyena. In a pack, hyenas will attack and kill a lion. This is why Leo, as powerful as he is, knows his limitations and prefers to retire in the enclosure of a cave or up the limb of a tree. While in deep slumber, he does not want a goodly part of himself forcibly removed. Instinctively smart, Leo is.
Likewise, the fleet and nimble gazelle is stalked by the fleeter and nimbler cheetah — a real speed merchant.
The shark and the poker shark are two animals that have no known predators. They are the master predators. The only possible predator of a poker shark is another poker shark. But they respect one another and their respective turfs, and are reluctant to duel. Thus, in the avoidance, they remain master predators.
It almost amounts to an unwritten law, an unholy alliance, a truce of sorts. And why not? For there is no need for cannibalism; there’s plenty of fresh meat all around. So, “Let’s take turns and help ourselves, Sharky.” Instinctive, practical, and smart — the sure instinct for self-preservation and financial survival, glorified by logic.
Technically, the poker shark is above average to good, and plays mild to moderately lucky. His forte or strong point is game selection. His modus operandi is a direct inheritance from the evolutionary zillions of years of practiced perfection: he starts out precisely and exactly like his sea brother. He “watches the game,” sniffing, scenting, circling, circling — the circles becoming smaller and smaller — and if the game is palatable enough and the attack conditions optimum, whamo. Contact: he moves in for the kill. Neat.
One of his favorite thrusts is the semi-bluff, particularly applicable to the coy, shaken, or intimidated. He senses this correctly. He wants to capture the pot there and then without further struggle. He knows the pot is still up for grabs — it’s still a jump ball — but by betting first or raising, he beats the whistle and is at once airborne. Now you’re looking up to him, and he’s looking down at you. It’s a sort of lord/serf awkward spatial relationship, but no noblesse oblige for sure. And since he has positional or betting momentum, a marginal hand is soon released, and the result is … a pretty nifty meal.
To fend off the poker shark, take anti-theft insurance now and against future thievery: Stand up to him by calling, or better yet, raise and reraise and then bet out. Win, lose, or draw, you have served notice that he’s gotta do it legit or on the strength of his card holdings, and not on some kind of tomfoolery or legerdemain. Notice how quickly he becomes subdued, for he hates to gamble — he wants the easy pickings.
Choice game selection refers to poker tables that are peopled by tourists, rookies, the bored with money to burn, the outright incompetent, the pretender-contenders, and so forth. These are considered the “soft games.”
If you are at least an average player, these are the best games in which to make a living. But you must monitor and patrol the poker sea lanes alertly, because these plums are not yours just for the taking. A school of piranhas is also out there and is fully aware that this type of game is the soft underbelly of poker livelihood.
Like sea sharks, poker sharks come in all forms and in all degrees of ferocity. One is your personalized poker shark, custom-built for your game. If you don’t believe that there is such an animal as a personalized poker shark, be prepared for the shock of your poker life. I want you to prove it to yourself by doing a very simple, very interesting, and very dollar-saving experiment. Lets put a touch of officiousness to it all by following the format of a standard high-school or college chemistry experiment.
Purpose: To determine whether you have a predator in your poker life.
Materials: A piece of paper and a pencil.
Methodology:
- First, determine who your worst poker nightmare is. Who is he? He’s the guy who clubs you more times than you club him, the guy who outdraws you more than you do him. Simply put, he’s the guy who gives you your daily poker enema. That’s who I’m talking about, babycakes. You got someone in mind? Good, we’ll use him in the experiment.
- Draw a line in the middle of the paper, thus dividing it into two columns.
- In column No. 1, enter the estimated or actual dollar amount that you have exposed or invested in a heads-up pot with your suspect predator. Indicate after the amount a plus (win) or a minus (loss). In column No. 2, enter the amount exposed and plus/minus results in a multiway pot. If neither of you wins, scratch that. It’s a standoff. Run these figures for a month—the longer, the more factual and the more shocking the results—then see me.
Sure enough, after a month, you blow the whistle on me: “Foul, traveling with too many assumptions!” You blow the whistle again. “Foul, offsides, off the blocks! The experiment is flawed by design!”
OK, Charlie boy, I’ll take your objections under advisement and will now humor you. Go ahead and redesign or modify the experiment, but please do not tamper with or fail to keep intact the central thrust. Then see me in another month and be prepared to offer me drinks and dinner. Consultation fee, Charlie boy. I don’t come cheap.
“Gee whiz, this louse, my suspect predator, seems to be stealing bread off my table and in broad daylight, too,” you say.
But you’re a taco head. You know you are hemorrhaging freely, but you are going to resort to the palliation of Band-Aiding with wishful thinking: “Oh, he was just lucky. I’ll get him today.” Missed. “I’ll get him tomorrow.” Missed again.
“I’ll get him all of next week.” Not even close; by a mile you missed again, Charlie boy.
What is it? Ego? Game revenge? Cerebral astigmatism (plain stupidity)? Finger-pressure the damn ruptured artery, Charles, and get it properly fixed before financial anemia sets in.
“Oh, but I learn quite a lot from playing with him,” you say. “I just love the challenge; it’s my poker tonic.” Good. See ya at the pawnshop. (Incidentally, I’m your friendly pawnbroker who has your interest at heart.) As we speak, my competitive juices are bubbling, tempting me to say, “Go ahead, Charlie, bang heads with him. He’s gotta have a bad day soon.” But today, as I got out of the shower and was admiring myself before the mirror, I noticed that the poker scars on my back have not yet completely healed. So I will opt for restraint and say, “Don’t truck with him, Charlie, until you get your hands on the wheel.”
Of course, there could be a role reversal. There often is: You now become his predator. But the point is this: What are you gonna do while waiting for the role reversal, huh? Bleed to death and be a hero in your mind? Be cavalier and shout from the highest mountain top, “Boy, did I go down fighting!” No medals for that, just a tombstone that simply reads:
Here lies Charlie, Best in the West, Dead in the East.
It is truly a wonder that this sort of thing happens, and to fairly level-headed folks. Many would say that the poker shark is just technically superior and that poor Charlie is not in his class. Whatever, whichever, it’s academic, because the accountant’s book tells a mighty compelling true story: It’s called multiple red-ink entries.
It is a poker reality that there are definitive instances and periods where a certain person (or persons) you do not care to love “has your number” or “owns you.” If you do not believe this, you have been swimming in the waters of Atlantis, or you have been doing all that jolly spearfishing yourself.
But you’re over 21. You know what to do, or damn well better know what to do. In any event, here’s a morsel of advice: Keep off his turf or don’t go near the water until you’re laced with octopod acetate—the black ink squirted by an octopus that is highly offensive to a shark. Yes, sir, defense, defense, defense. Avoid his pots and play only quality hands against him.
But here’s a more intriguing scenario. Are you a poker shark in someone’s poker life? Run the same experiment. If you are, quickly tear a page out of Coach Lombardi’s football playbook: Isolate and seek out your quarry, and “run the same damn play all day until he can prove that he can damn well stop you!”
The Poker Night Shark (also known as “Dracula,” the “Gravedigger,” the “Ghoul,” or the “Undertaker”) is a deviously scheming animal, habitually nocturnal in its predatory activity. His kill technique is one of pure (custom-built) design and a real piece of work. He sleeps all day, and his office hours are the same as Dracula’s: midnight to sunrise.
It is during this time that the remains in the cardroom are the luckless, the terribly stuck (losers) desperately trying to get even, the physically spent, and the mentally fogged-out—all poker cadavers and all easy prey.
Dracula makes his appearance in the cardroom as fresh as a rained-on daisy and as crisp as black pocket aces. Stealthily sneaking and slithering to a poker seat, the Undertaker is packed with body bags—pardon me, make that moneybags. Trust me, when he’s done, you’re as good as embalmed for a century, because this guy uses nothing but no—mercy, industrial-strength formalin.
You see, in the Poker Animal Kingdom, it is not the survival of the fittest; it is the survival of the smartest.
Poker Digest Magazine – Volume 1 Number 4