Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Texas Hold’em Food Chain

At the top of our actual food chain is said to be the shark. The same applies to poker. Poker has few sharks and many fish. It is not surprising that the sharks remain on the top of our poker food chain. That is their place!

Day after day more sharks are born; they bring their unidentified bodies to an online poker table and start chomping. Never do they eat alive the oldest, biggest and best of the shark world though, only fish! Look at the most popular online gaming sites. They have their sponsored sharks at the tables daily. These sharks eat alive even the most talented of players – the wanna be sharks. The wanna be’s simply can’t compete in the poker food chain. They just don’t quite have the skills. I guess we could call them turtles, compared to the great whites of the online poker ocean!

We have tad poles and guppies also in our poker food chain. It doesn’t matter what these little ones do, they remain on micro tables. The medium fish have skills just a little better then theirs chomp away at their bankroll and increase in the poker food chain as they grow.

To make a chart of the poker food chain is really simple:
  1. Great White Sharks: High Stakes Killers
  2. Turtles – High Stakes Attempters
  3. Medium Fish – Medium Stakes
  4. Guppies – Low Stakes
  5. Tad Poles – Micro Stakes
  6. Fish Out of Water – Stay off the Internet Poker Tables until you can swim.
Where do you fit in to the “Poker Food Chain”? Wherever you fit you must play your stakes accordingly. You can make money in poker regardless of your food chain level – Unless you are a fish out of water! (If you are get lessons on poker strategy).

For those who want to be a turtle I have a suggestion – Play medium to high stakes instead of attempting to come face to face with a predator you cannot possibly beat. If you are losing at medium stakes, go and eat some guppies! Guppies of course can always eat some tadpoles.

Let’s look at this as a classic example. I stepped down in the online “poker food chain” not so long ago – for 1 day! I increased my bankroll by 15 times what it was! Morally it may be seen as wrong, being a medium fish playing guppies. Regardless if I attempted to eat a turtle I would have been dead and had NO bank roll at all! At times we all need to step down in the food chain as part of survival. If we were down to our last $10 on our online poker site we would hardly play medium stakes.

Again, look at your level on the “poker food chain” and don’t be too proud to be a guppy or tad pole when needed. I have seen 1 of the BEST ONLINE poker players playing in $1 SNG’s. There is no shame – be proud! This player was ranked 80th in the world of online poker and was playing $1 tournaments due to being kicked and booted and eaten alive by great white sharks. He should have remained a turtle and instead became meat and reduced to a guppy! Sometimes we need to go down to get back up. Remember the food chain when we do this. Every guppy can grow into a fish!

By :Danielle Adams-Benham

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They just don’t quite have the skills. I guess we could call them turtles,
Thanks for This Post

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