A Sense of Where You Are

Poker often yields many life metaphors. Sometimes life offers us a poker metaphor. Today I want to discuss how someone from basketball history and political present can teach us all some important poker lessons.

Long before Bill Bradley was a U.S. senator and oft-mentioned presidential hopeful, he attracted the public eye because he was arguably the greatest "student athlete" (a phrase that in the 21st century is almost an oxymoron) of all time. While at Princeton, he not only won a Rhodes Scholarship, but he led a bunch of hopelessly overmatched regular Ivy League "student athletes" to the 1965 NCAA tournament's final four.

Princeton didn't win the title, falling to Michigan (and future New York Knicks teammate Cazzie Russell) in the semis, but Bradley did manage to score 58 points in the third-place game.

The only other comparable feat in recent memory occurred in 1987 when David Robinson led a bunch of Navy guys who looked like quality opposition for an intramural basketball league into the NCAA tournament (oddly enough, it was Michigan that ended Navy's NCAA run, too; although playing virtually two-on-five – he had one useful teammate – Robinson made it a game).

Given more talented teammates, both Bradley and Robinson won at least one championship in the NBA. By the time you read this, Robinson might have his second.

In 1965, Bradley became the subject of a John McPhee book, A Sense of Where You Are. The title stemmed in part from Bradley's belief that awareness of what's going on in whatever the present moment is enables people to succeed, both on and off the basketball court.

The basketball meaning is probably easier for those who remember Bradley's play (especially professionally). He was a great pure shooter, but as they say these days, he wasn't one of those guys who could create his own shot. Relative to his opposition, he wasn't strong, couldn't jump, and wasn't particularly fast or quick.

Bradley scored all those points because he and his teammates played team basketball, not individual basketball, and he knew where everyone was at all times – both his teammates and the opposition.

By combining his awareness with a style that involved staying in near-constant motion, Bradley was able to flow to the least defensible point on a basketball court and secure wide-open shots, even though his opposition knew how dangerous he was if he could get a wide-open shot.

Think about it: In college, Bradley was the sole focus of his opposition's defensive game plan, and even with at least two players assigned to him at virtually every moment, he still found open shot after open shot. As a professional, he benefited from one-on-one coverage, but his opposition knew the only thing they had to worry about was Bradley spotting up for an open shot – and he still earned innumerable opportunities.

How could this happen? Because Bradley had a sense of where he was – and, of course, a sense of where everyone else was.

If you hang around top-level poker players long enough, you are certain to hear multiple variations of this concept. "I couldn't figure out where he was at, so I folded." "I knew exactly where he was, so I raised with garbage." "I wasn't sure where I was, so I just flat-called."

When top players utter these phrases, they're not confused about whether they're playing at the Commerce or the Bike. They are talking about their attempts to absorb the total sum of everything going on at the moment in order to make their decisions.

The following is a dreadfully incomplete list of the factors these players try to include in their thought processes:

1. Opponent's prior reputation

2. How opponent has been playing the current session

3. How opponent has been playing the last few minutes of the current session

4. Any physical or auditory clues (tells, if you will) available not just from the opponent but from everyone at the table; for example, if someone who folded preflop looks like he wants to fall over and die when the flop comes K-3-3, it's a pretty reasonable bet that he folded pocket threes.

5. Their own image, in general

6. Their own current image

7. Whether the opponent is someone who considers image, and if so, what the opponent is likely to think right now

8. What they think the opponent thinks they think, and all of the "I know that you know that I know" levels that follow

9. Bankroll considerations for everyone involved

10. Strength of their own hand

This is why so few poker questions can be answered in the abstract, or in a vacuum. As I'm fond of saying, "Context is king." The right play against Player A is the wrong play against Player B, and it could easily be the wrong play against Player A under other game circumstances.

This is why players who read the newspaper or watch basketball games on TV monitors when they are not involved in hands face a losing struggle against equally talented players who are remaining focused, or throw away much (if not all) of their edge against lesser players.

The importance of remaining focused on where you are doesn't need some kind of dramatic current example to become worthy of discussion. Good players have been thinking and talking about it for many, many years.

Nonetheless, at the recently completed 2003 World Series of Poker, I ran into (if you'll pardon the expression) four rather dramatic examples of it, and only one of them involved a hand. The example with the hand was a mistake I made against Patti Beadles, and it came solely from a momentary loss of focus, because almost immediately after I'd pushed my stack forward – even before Patti called with the better hand and well before I got lucky on the river – I suddenly asked myself, "What in the world did you do that for?"

One moment's loss of focus could have knocked me out right then and there, but I did get lucky. The other three moments are related, too much so to be brushed off as a coincidence. You've already read about them if you read my "Welcome to 'The House of Pain'" column.

For those who missed it, here's the setup: I hurt my back (for the first time since 1995) just minutes before I was supposed to leave for the Series. This problem kept me from entering as many events as I'd planned, and also cut down on the number I was able to cover. Nonetheless, about three days before the "Big One," my back finally started feeling better, so I entered.

Ten minutes before the event began, someone came flying out of Binion's gift shop in a full run, and I literally had to jump out of the way to avoid a collision. This set off the back troubles again, as did two actual collisions on Day Two when, while seated, I got slammed into, once early in the day by someone who was in a big hurry to see his hand, and once late in the day by someone who had a bit more of an excuse, because with the antes and blinds as large as they were at that point, missing a hand was more critical.

I've frequently noted that Las Vegas is probably the hardest place in the world to walk quickly, because the gaming patrons seem to be walking about in a kind of daze, not quite sure which bright light, buzzer, or seemingly hot table is next calling to them. Slot players and pit gamblers are amongst the least aware people I've ever known, at least when they are not actually involved in their games (and, of course, if they were truly aware when playing, they probably wouldn't be playing).

Nonetheless, in 34 years of going to Las Vegas (I started at 13), I'd actually been slammed into only once. Oddly enough, that was when I was 13. A guy who had just won a ton of green ($25) chips was hurrying away from his blackjack table and ran into me. His chips went flying. He picked them up and hurried away. (As an aside, I found two of them behind a platform and tracked him across the casino to return them. He accepted without so much as a "thanks," never mind a tip.)

That makes one collision on my first-ever trip, and three (believe me, if I hadn't had a good sense of where I was, the near miss would have been a collision; the other two I couldn't have seen coming without eyes in the back of my head) on my most recent one. Three in a two-day span is no coincidence. What was happening?

The answer is pretty easy: the buzz and electricity associated with an 839 player, $2.5 million-to-the-winner championship. You've no doubt heard various announcers talk about "the electricity in the air" at big sporting events, and if you've ever been to an NCAA title game or a deciding game of a professional championship, you understand exactly what they mean. There really is something created by all of that anticipation and excitement, something that when multiplied by hundreds or thousands of people becomes palpable and almost measurable.

If these running people had been more aware of what was going on around them, they probably wouldn't have been running, or if running would have realized how possible a collision was with so many people in the room. Perhaps they all had been saving their focus and awareness for the tables themselves.

I submit, though, that for most people, awareness isn't something that can be turned on and off like a light switch (you don't know how much I wanted to write "light saber" instead of light switch … hmm, maybe now you do).

If you're feeling out of control or focus 10 minutes before a game or tournament starts, how long will it take you to settle down once it has begun? If you're hugely worried about missing one hand when there aren't even antes yet, will you have the patience to make it through a five-day event?

My third collision came from a friend, Phil Hellmuth. Unlike the first two runners, Phil stopped to apologize, and perhaps just as important, Phil has been playing long enough, and had enough success in no-limit tournaments, to be able to gauge whether racing out of a room when out of a hand will cause too much adrenaline when he returns.

Heck, even in Phil's case, it might be interesting to see if he performs better when walking or running on his breaks. He has nine bracelets: Maybe he could have 15. Regardless, there are only two other players with nine bracelets, so it's pretty hard to argue with his results. You don't have nine bracelets. You probably don't have the long-established track (no pun intended) record that Phil does. That means you will almost certainly benefit from putting more effort into having a sense of where you are, both when at the tables and when approaching them.

A true sense of where you are requires assimilating the totality of your circumstances. If you stop, even for a few minutes, that means that when you start back, you're missing data about the time when you lost your focus.

I might be making winning poker seem a lot more like work than fun, but if you're not prepared to work, come prepared to lose. After working on your awareness for a while, you might find it bringing an entirely different kind of fun. You might need to have someone else tell you what kind of game David Robinson had against the Nets, but he'll be able to. He won't need to be focusing on carrying all those racks of chips to the cage without running into anyone.