A Similarity Between Poker and Mother Nature

    Let me share with you a striking revelation I've had this past night regarding a theory about the direction of poker.  More specifically about the survivability of modern day professional poker players.

    Poker pros are most often referred to as sharks, but I like to think of them more as a land predator such as a tiger, lion or cheetah.  These predators born in their natural environment are akin to the likes of Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Barry Greenstein, Freddy Deeb, and Men Nguyen just to name a few.  These players lives fell into a series of events that led them to their career in poker where they learned the game through logic and experience.  Poker has changed quite a bit through the years and these cats were able to adapt to it.  They had to or else they die from lack of prey.  Let's take, for example, when holdem and 7-stud became legal in California.  The availability of draw and lowball games began to dry up as more people started playing stud and holdem.  Pros who only played draw or lowball would have to adapt to the newly legalized games or else their profits would dry up.  In a sense, it's like following a migrating herd to ensure a sustainability in sustenance.

    Now let me tell you that all this is just history that has proven itself in relation to the laws of nature.  What my main concern about the pros of today is that they have been raised in the wrong environment.  They have been raised in a place where the prey is abundant and plentiful and all in one concentrated geographic region.  Now remembering back from that old college or high school biology class, what happens when there is an abundance of prey?  The prey get attacked by even more predators!  In a time when there are more people playing poker than ever before, pros seem to be popping up like hotcakes!  Any time you watch ESPN or the WPT, they're always doing a bio on some new 21 year old Joe Schmoe internet pro no one has ever heard of.  This huge increase in pros poses a problem, especially in no limit holdem.  As all the dead money from all the amateur players move up the poker food chain, their cash will be depleted and will no longer be able to play as much, if at all.  The increase of predators will decrease the amount of prey and will in-turn decrease the amount of predators.

    I assume most poker pros are intelligent enough to adapt, but I think once the poker boom settles down, quite a few pros will, by nature, be forced to call it quits and go find some "real work."