Killer Instinct
22 February 2010Poker is a game of predator and prey. I mean it’s practially built into the lingo with the terms “fish” and “shark.” The object of the game is to be the last man standing, the one with all the chips. If you think of yourself as a hunter on the felt, you’re more likely to play with that aggressiveness that’s needed to succeed. If you play like you’re being hunted, chances are your nerves will get the best of you and you’ll end up losing your chips like the hunted gazelle loses its life to the lion.
If you’re going to play poker for a living, then you have to stop and recognize whether or not you have that killer instinct needed for success. Stop for a minute and look at your past results. Are you a consistently winning player, or have you continually been preyed upon in the past? If you picked the latter, you may have to resign yourself to a poker for fun player, and think not of it as a career.
On the other hand, you can look at your past blunders and if it was just one or two bad situations that wiped out your bankroll, and not a session of 10k hands that you just happened to be playing very poorly, then it’s quite possible for you to take your game to the next level if you simply review your mistakes and learn from them. Again, it comes down to that killer instinct. If you put your poker online life on the line to a rock with pocket kings because you’re too stubborn to lay them to down to a rock that only continues a hand when he knows he has the nuts, then you lack that survival instinct and likewise that killer instinct, for to kill others, one must survive oneself.
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