INTRODUCTION
Shark. Fish. They are two of the more common expressions in poker. One conjures images of great hunters of the sea: savage aggression, flesh-severing teeth, and a hauntingly efficient nose for blood. The latter is shark food. They are more numerous but less dangerous and more… ordinary.
Poker players share many similarities with wild animals such as sharks and fish. To both, survival is of the utmost importance as there are always hunters and competitors lurking. However, survival alone is not enough to be successful. For this, one needs to survive AND reproduce. Good players understand that the goal isn’t merely to protect your chips. Nor is it to put your chips constantly at risk while attempting to generate more. Instead, the optimal ratio lies somewhere in between these polar strategies.
Behavioral ecologists have found that animals also must find this balance. Only they don’t study texts and theory to determine which way is best. Instead they discover it through trial and error while risking something much more valuable than the chips that are in front of us. The ones that use the most efficient strategies are the ones that survive and reproduce. The rest, at varying rates, eventually go broke.
Despite the prevalence of terms like shark and fish, and perhaps because of them, much of the wealth of information available from the natural world has been overlooked. For millions of years, predators and prey have waged an evolutionary arms race towards survival and greater reproductive success. There have been strategies and counter-strategies and counter-counter-strategies. Poker players have a chance to learn from the best of the best.
A few examples of prey strategies used for thwarting predators and of hunter counter-methods should illustrate the applicability of these tactics to poker.
Detection and anti-detection strategies are often the simplest and most intuitive methods. For example, some desert rodents such as Banner-Tailed Kangaroo Rats forage more on moonless nights than on well-lit ones (Kotler 1984; Lockard 1978). This is presumably because their avian hunters have a more difficult time spotting them when there is no moon (Kotler 1984; Lockard 1978). Similarly it would be advantageous for a relatively unskilled poker player to avoid playing when many better players are around.
Many creatures also use cryptic behavior to avoid detection; they use camouflage to blend into the background. Predators have developed a method to counter-act this and to decrease the amount of time spent looking for food. They make use of search images (Tinbergen 1960). Blue Jays do this by stressing subtle visual markers associated with their food while searching (Pietrewicz and Kamil 1979). Poker players can do the same by creating stereotypes and generalizations, then applying them to the people sitting at the table around them. This timesaving shortcut will increase the speed with which one can identify everyone at the table. It could also be used to identify the variety of fish preferred from the others in a quick and timely fashion.
Even if they are detected, prey have strategies that can deter predators from attacking. One such method is association with a protected species. For example, close proximity to wasps or ants that are particularly aggressive towards one’s predators could provide some safety (Alcock 1997). A monkey will prefer to raid someone else’s nest if it has to brave painful wasps in order to reach yours (Joyce 1993). Similarly, if one is seated near a wild, lucky player with a big stack or near a good loose and aggressive player that player could be used as a buffer or shield. It would be very difficult for a shark to target you because he is also risking a tango with the other player’s stack.
Displaying warning coloration is another attack deterrent strategy. The goal is to advertise your unpleasantness so that the predator recognizes and avoids you (Alcock 1997). Even though the predator would probably still be able to eat the prey, it won’t like it very much if it gets sick, injured, or dies from the process. Thus warning coloration spares both the predator and the prey from unpleasantness. Monarch butterflies are famous for this (Wiklund and Sillén-Tullberg 1985). Their predators become ill and vomit after digestion and quickly learn to avoid them in the future (Wiklund and Sillén-Tullberg 1985). Many good poker players also use this strategy. They utilize a tight and aggressive table image to advertise that any potential attackers would be playing from behind.
All is not lost if you aren’t a good poker player or a toxic butterfly. There is also a deceptive side to warning coloration called Batesian Mimicry after Henry Bates, the naturalist who discovered it (Alcock 1997). Non-toxic and fishy individuals both can display warning coloration to deceive predators away from what would otherwise be a tasty snack. This is because although they, themselves, are not dangerous, the predators will avoid them due to their resemblance, at a glance, to their more unpleasant brethren.
Finally Optimal Foraging Theory warrants mentioning. This states that for one to forage optimally, it should choose food that provides the most energy for the least amount of effort (Wikipedia OFT). For clam-eating crows, this means ignoring smaller clams and focusing instead on larger ones (Richardson and Verbeek 1986). Small clams do not maximize food per energy spent (Richardson and Verbeek 1986). For poker sharks, this means searching for fish with a lot of money already on the table a.k.a. ATMs. Neither the poker players or the crows will be performing as well as they could if they wasted time on small prey when they could go for the larger stacks instead.
There is also a silver lining to this for people who find that he/she is being seated at a table consisting of more talented and stronger players. By buying in for a small amount, say the minimum buy-in, one might be able to play under the radar. After all, good players will be trying to forage optimally and to them you are only small clams.
CONCLUSION
The strategies discussed are just the tip of the iceberg. They represent a simplified sampling of predator and prey strategies that could be found in most animal behavior and behavioral ecology textbooks such as Alcock’s Animal Behavior. More complex strategies and greater analysis are published in various scientific journals; many of which are available on the Internet. Finally, predator and prey strategies aren’t the only aspects of behavioral ecology relevant to poker. Others include coping strategies for unpredictable and changing environments, stimulus filtering, habitat selection, migration, and competition with like individuals.
Much can be learned from these effective stratagems, which have been evolving for millions of years. Even if some seem elementary, one should remember that often the simplest strategies are the most efficient. But they are often the most overlooked.
REFERENCES
Alcock, J. Animal Behavior, 6th Ed. Sinauer Associates, Inc: Sunderland, Massachusetts. 1997.
Joyce, F.J. “Nesting Success of Rufous-Naped Wrens (Campylorhynchus ruifnucha) is Greater Near Wasp Nests.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 32: pp. 71-78. 1993.
Kotler, B.P. “Effects of Illumination on the Rate of Resource Harvesting in a Community of Desert Rodents.” American Midland Naturalist 11: pp. 383-389. 1984.
Lockard, R.B. “Seasonal Change in the Activity Pattern of Dipodomys spectabilis.” Journal of Mammalogy 59: pp. 563-568. 1978.
“Optimal Foraging Theory.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_foraging_theory. 2006.
Pietrewicz, A.T. and Kamil, A.C. “Search Image Formation in the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata).” Science 204: pp. 1332-1333. 1979.
Richardson, H. and Verbeek, N.A.M. “Diet Selection and Optimization by Northwestern Crows Feeding on Japanese Littleneck Clams.” Ecology 67: pp. 1219-1226. 1986.
Tinbergen, N. The Herring Gull’s World. Doubleday: Garden City, New York. 1960.
Wiklund, C. and Sillén-Tullberg, B. “Why Distasteful Butterflies Have Aposematic Larvae and Adults, But Cryptic Pupae: Evidence from Predation Experiments on the Monarch and the European Swallowtail.” Evolution 39: pp. 1155-1158. 1985.
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