Wild Poker: the wolf-pack mentality
Much like human nature, poker has a wild-side to it. There’s no doubt about it. Players around the table behave like a wolf-pack. There’s an alpha individual (which is usually the guy with the largest stack – big surprise there), regular pack members who constantly bicker about the hierarchy and each and every one of which aspires to become the dominant individual someday. Then there are weak links which always draw the ire of the entire pack. Nowhere is this phenomenon more obvious than in single table poker tournaments. Being fascinated by the psychological aspect of the game, I have played in quite a few such low buy-in STTs myself, and I can tell you: the size of the buy-in doesn’t matter. For those who play at the given levels, each and every buy-in is a huge part of their bankroll. These guys will fight for every nickel, penny or cent the same way they would if hundreds or thousands of dollars were involved. What I can also tell you is that I didn’t just observe the wolf-pack mentality in action, I partook in it with devilish delight unworthy of an objective observer.
In a STT, only the top few finishers win any money. The rest of the players lose their buy-ins, so one basically gets 10 guys fighting over 4 spots and such (some STT feature more paying positions but that is a minor technicality as far as the goals of this article are concerned.
As soon as the game kicks off, players become cornered animals. They circle one another, looking for weakness and as soon as they spot something, they strike. Courage is not always rewarded, though aggression is most of the time. A truly pure form of the wolf-pack mentality is reached when the money bubble (the last paying position) approaches. This is when players gang up on the weakling, and that - from a purely psychology-perspective - is a true pleasure to behold. The player with the shortest stack becomes the target of every one of the other survivors. He is bullied, bluffed, pushed around and ganged up upon hand after hand, and the smaller his stack grows, the more intense the “treatment” becomes.
Soon, the weakling has no other options left but to shove it all in preflop. That’s when something extraordinary happens: the other players become willing to call his all-in despite the adverse odds they get on flimsy starting hands. The reason is that the more starting hands the weakling has to go up against, the bigger the hit his mathematical odds take. Most of these guys are willing to sacrifice a part of their precious stack (which represents their tournament life-blood), just to see the weakling go. As soon as he’s disposed of, another player takes on the role of the short-stack and the whole thing goes around again.
Protected by the relative anonymity offered by the internet, players have no problems reverting to the animal within. The funny thing is, you’ll get caught up in the wolf-pack before you know it too, regardless of how immune you think you are to it.