Pace: A Poker Parable

I've been pretty athletic my whole life. Baseball, basketball, surfing, swimming … if there's a ball involved, or water, I'm there. Until I was in my 30s, however, I never cared much for running. I'd run up and down a basketball court all day long, but the solitary act of running around a track (or a park or a lake) held no appeal for me whatsoever. Without any "object to the game" to serve as a distraction, with no point to the exercise but the exercise itself, I could never find any satisfaction in the process; all I could think about was the pain in my side, and being out of breath, and how much I wanted to stop.

Unlike many athletic pursuits, however, running is something you can engage in almost anywhere, and it requires no partners, equipment, or planning. So, every couple of years I'd find myself grudgingly giving it another shot. Over the years, my usual run was three miles, a distance I normally covered in just under 20 minutes. From time to time, my runner friends suggested that I adopt a more leisurely pace, but to me that made little sense, for the people I observed trudging along on their 10-minute miles seemed, if anything, to be laboring even harder than I was. I was distance-oriented, and was stubbornly convinced that running at a moderate pace was just as exhausting as running at a brisk one; the only thing the slower pace accomplished was to add even more time to an already interminable exercise. With such an attitude, it was hardly surprising that I eventually gave it up altogether.

But several years ago, when I was living in New York, I decided to give it one last try. I mentioned the idea to a friend, who suggested we go running together in Central Park. I enthusiastically agreed, thinking the company might be just the ticket to alleviate the monotony. I was surprised, however, the day of our first run when my friend, a pretty athletic guy, started off at a pace I considered downright glacial. "This pace all right for you?" he asked with a friendly smile. Not wanting to offend, I nodded politely, but I suddenly wasn't looking forward to the next mile and a half, the goal we'd established for our opening day workout. Then a funny thing happened: Although bored with a pace that required 13 minutes to cover a mile and a half, I couldn't help but notice that for the first time in my life I was barely winded at the end of a run. Intrigued by this, I went out by myself two days later and ran three miles, and a week after that, having set out with no such lofty goal in mind, I astonished myself by running eight miles – almost three times the longest distance I'd ever covered before. Within a month and a half, I had two 10-mile runs under my belt and one 12-miler. Apparently, there was something to this pace business after all.

Flushed with my overnight "success," I planned out a realistic regimen of regular three- and five-mile runs, to be interspersed every couple of weeks with a gradually increasing longer one; in this way, I hoped to build my stamina up to marathon level. It was a good plan, but unfortunately I didn't stick to it. Instead, I fell into a trap not unlike that of a gambler who experiences great fortune early in his career – I became intoxicated with the experience of the "big score." Although I'd occasionally pack it in after the intended three or five miles, most of the time I'd just keep going, and I'd keep going until I simply couldn't go any more. The idea of topping myself, and then topping myself again, was too seductive to resist, and I yielded to it consistently in what soon became an almost obsessional need to set new personal records.

This go-for-it-all approach, although exhilarating at first, eventually proved quite draining. Once the 15-mile barrier fell, I found it difficult to ever settle for anything less than eight or 10 miles, and it soon came to the point where every outing turned into an endurance test. Before long, I began to view running with as much dread as I had as a younger man, and once again I was on the verge of giving it up altogether.

Then one day, after a much needed week off, I made a simple decision. I was running in the park, approaching the five-mile mark with "plenty left in the tank," when it suddenly occurred to me that if I stopped right then, with plenty of energy in reserve, I might establish the idea in my thick skull that running, instead of being something necessarily arduous, might instead be something relatively easy and enjoyable. And if it was easy and enjoyable, I might just stick with it. So, I did stop, and to further reinforce the idea, I limited myself to the shorter distances over the next few weeks, as well. The new approach worked wonders, for instead of forcing myself to the point where my runs all but "broke" me, I was now ending my workouts with a sense of being energized and in control.

I still occasionally rip off a 10-miler, but it's been a long time since I've felt the need to break personal records. For me, the cumulative value of 15 leisurely miles a week, approached with a positive attitude, is clearly greater than that of running 10 miles at a pop, if those 10 miles prove to be so grueling that I can psyche myself up for it only three or four times a month.

The moral of this story is, I'm sure, quite obvious. I was in my early 20s when I first played in public cardrooms, and the experience was more or less analogous. Like many young players, I was seduced by the idea of big scores, and while I set out with realistic goals, I was rarely satisfied when I reached them, preferring instead to play on and on … and on. This approach did produce some big wins, but it also resulted in some entirely avoidable disasters, disasters that put me out of action altogether. Whatever your goals are – in running, in poker, or in life – you can't very well hit the finish line if you're out of the race.

Some poker players are timid; they're so concerned with protecting their modest wins that they never give themselves a crack at a big payday. Other players, by contrast, never learn how to "win small." At 21, I was in the latter category – and out of action far too often to achieve my poker goals. That's when I decided to heed the advice of a poker pal who said, "Look, you're not playing tournaments, and you're not playing big-time games. You're playing low and medium, so listen up: The key to winning at low and medium ain't winning big. It's winning regular."

In my case, learning to "win regular" required a change in attitude and routine. I had to learn to accept the small wins along with the big. I had to learn to accept the manageable loss, too. Most importantly, I had to learn that poker doesn't have to be an endurance test, and that there's a lot more to the game than the thrill of the big score – there's the simple gratification of the routine win, and the cumulative value of session records written in black ink rather than red.