 Happy Sunday!
“I used to think of fighting as violent chess, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s definitely more like an…aggressive form of poker.” Sensei Bob I used to liken fighting and sparring to chess; as a game of strategy, with a significant planning and execution to the process. But, as most of you know…I’m always learning and reading and listening to my favorite podcasts. This week on The Drive, Peter Attia and his guest, Annie Duke, discussed decision making and she shared something that almost immediately shifting my thinking. Here’s my new thinking… Even with a basic understanding of the way the pieces move in chess, both players have access to all of the information available. Every possible move is available and visible to both players in the game. What you do with the given information is up to you. Poker on the other hand, specifically Texas Hold ‘Em, is a different monster altogether. You have sole access to your cards, shared access to the community cards, and no access to the cards of the other players. To me, this resembles our sparring more. You have all access to your cards, or skills. You know your strengths and can make some predictions on how the match should go according to your skill set. The problem is, especially in competition, you don’t have access to your opponents cards/skills. So where do the common community cards come into play? How in the world does that work in sparring, and competition. When you step into a match, what could you possibly have in common with your opponent? Well, in my current thinking, I’m focused on the practicals. We’ve got the agreed upon rules, and the time limits of the rounds/match. Those confines of the match are available to both competitors to use as they wish. So, how do you get to be good at using those cards? How do you grow in your ability to use the community cards to predict what cards your opponent might be holding? The answer to that is actually very simple: PRACTICE. So, this week, we will be doing a lot of practicing rounds; with different time limits and different rule sets. Our goal is to get enough practice over the next few months that we can turn off our thinking brain and turn using our personal skills (cards) with as little thought as possible.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |