Tennis and poker?

Posted by amarillosb

January 22, 2008

I heard a funny story on a poker podcast recently. There were so many tennis players at the Aussie Millions (The Austrailian Open is taking place just a couple miles away from the casino) that reporters were hanging around the casino looking for tennis pros to interview. One of them thought Phil Ivey was James Blake. Pretty bad, huh?

Not long after, I heard an interview with Vanessa Selbst. She talked about playing tennis at MIT before becoming a poker pro. She’s not the only one to convert tennis skills to poker playing. Patrick Antonius, Gus Hanson, Hasan Habib, and David Benyamine all used to play tennis. If you log on to pokerstars, there’s a good chance you’ll see Boris Becker’s intense (and slightly creepy) mug at the bottom of your screen.

I also used to play tennis. I played through high school in Texas and even made it to the USTA’s superchampionship division. I never really thought about it before, but there are some important skills I learned on the court that help me now at the table.

Pressure Individual sports are different psychologically than a team sport like basketball or football. There is no one else you can lean on. There also isn’t a clock that you can run out to end the game. In tennis and in poker the game only ends when you win, lose, or decide to leave. It’s all on you. If you lack the aggression or competitiveness to finish an opponent off, then you’re not going to win. You also can’t depend on a coach to tell you what to do during the game (unless you’re Jamie Gold); instead, you just have to figure things on your own or suffer the consequences.

Strategy You must think several moves in advance in both sports. When I played tennis, I would say to myself, “I’m going to serve the ball to the outside corner, hit the next shot cross-court, then back across to the other side again to wear her out. After that, since her backhand is weak, I’ll make her hit four backhands in a row.” At one table, I might play really tight for the first thirty minutes, just to set up later bluffing opportunities, and in another tight game show a couple of loose calls to buy some future action. It’s the same kind of thought process in both sports. They both also require analyzing and exploiting opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. If you know a tennis opponent hits her lobs a little short, you have to be ready to pound every one of those, just like you would against a tournament poker player who doesn’t defend blinds.

Focus In tennis you are by yourself on the court, so if you lose focus, you can look up and be down four or five games, a margin that is difficult to overcome. It’s just as easy to lose focus at the table—to start chatting too much with your neighbors, get a little sleepy, or watch tv while playing online—and be out of a tournament or down big money in a cash game. Those of us who’ve had years of practice keeping our focus are bound to be able to hold our attention, thoughts, and intensity for longer.

A competitive and aggressive nature can only help at the table. In this way, I think poker players who are or have been athletes gain an advantage. Chess, backgammon, or gin players might very well also have a strategic advantage. But it seems like tennis and other individual sports may uniquely prepare poker players in both areas.

I didn’t learn to play poker until I was 22. When I quit tennis at 18, after years and years of practice and thousands of my mom’s dollars spent on coaching and travel, I wondered what it was all for. Now I know, and I’m not so sure mom would have forked over all that dough if she knew where it would lead.

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