On Being a Poker Shark

To be sure, casinos and online poker are shark infested poker venues. They have lots of poker sharks roaming around looking for other poker players to beat. And if one is a poker shark, one has to look for other poker sharks to beat because it's survival of the fittest, right? Wrong.

Remember first of all that one plays poker to win, not to beat other sharks. Even if one is a good shark at poker, preying on small fish at poker tables, seldom go after fellow sharks in poker. Even real sharks out at sea look for smaller and weaker fish to prey on, not fellow sharks. Shark experts say sharks are often loners that want to work alone, rather than in schools of sharks---if there's such a thing.

The pitfall among egotistic poker sharks is to look for fellow sharks and try to beat them---either to prove that they're the best poker sharks, or to keep the poker shark kingship for themselves and shoo off other shark contenders. It is often a question of who's the best shark. But with this attitude, winning in poker loses its essence. First and foremost, playing poker is winning in poker. Players should play to win, not prove a point.

It is useless to play poker to make everybody see who's the poker champ. We play poker to win some money to take home. A meaningful poker is not when we have beaten the best of the best in poker; poker has real meaning when we win money. Thus, being a poker shark has real advantage only as far as we hunt for the small fish at poker tables. We should try to stay away as much as possible from fellow poker sharks. But this doesn't mean that playing with fellow poker sharks is a total taboo. We may try our skills against those of other poker sharks'. This will further hone us to more poker mastery. But it is important to bear in mind that we pit ourselves with other poker sharks now and then not to prove a point, but to win a pot.

There's also a down side to avoiding every poker shark in the area. If we just aim for the fish and avoid every shark, our poker skills might diminish to mediocrity and pretty soon we become one of the fish.

Being a poker shark does wonders for the ego, but we must always remember that winning poker is for the money, not for ego feeding.