Poker and Driving

Poker Strategy / Matthew Pitt / 10 October 2011 / Leave a Comment

The only way to develop skills in both poker and driving is to basically get out there and do as much of it as possible. Poker players need to play for hours on end and log tens if not hundreds of thousands of hands

Over the past couple of year, on the Betfair Poker blog, writers have compared poker to a whole range of subjects including poker and warfare and poker in the classroom but what about poker and driving? Although the two could not be more different if they tried to be, poker and driving do actually share some commonalities, mainly in the way we learn new skills.

When I first started to learn how to drive I hardly new anything about what it took to make the car move. I knew the car had three pedals, the accelerator, brake and clutch and that in order to change gear the clutch had to be depressed but apart from that I knew very little at all. I read the highway code and learned all the road signs, traffic laws and information such as stopping distances and started to build a knowledge base in my brain.

Building foundations

The story behind me starting to play poker is very similar indeed. The first time I sat down at an online poker cash game I honestly did not have a clue, in fact I remember finding a forum and asking why my king-deuce had lost to ace-king on a king-high board. Having been flamed on that particular forum I took it upon myself to learn everything about the game through books I had seen people talk about on forums, but this alone was not enough o make me proficient at poker, just as knowing what to do to make the car move safely did not make me a driver, but it gave me a solid base to start adding new skills to.

For the first few hours of learning to drive I had to concentrate on each action 100%. To change gear I would consciously think, "take foot off gas, depress clutch, change gear, bring clutch up slowly, ease onto the gas" etc but over a period of time this became more automated to the point where now, ten years after passing my driving test and after having driven probably 250,000 miles, I literally do not think about anything to do with driving. I can drive tired, in all weathers and all emotional states. I have quite literally mastered how to drive.

My poker development was very similar to this. When I first started playing fixed limit Hold'em I had a starting hand chart that I followed very rigidly but as time wore on and I got more and more hands under my belt the starting hand chart basically became redundant and I no longer had to think about what hands to play and in what position profitable. Eventually more and more parts of the game became almost automatic, I know what I am going to do on each of my four to six tables depending on the actions of my opponents and it is a quite rare occurrence for me to be in a spot where I cannot think of the best action to take and I am now at the point where only playing drunk or extremely tired effects how I approach the game. I am not saying I have mastered playing poker but I am certainly in the advanced stages because everything is becoming automatic, much like a reflex action.

Car Crash

The idea for this particular article came to me last week when Mrs Puding crashed our car into the back of a car that was stood in traffic. A van had pulled out on her, causing her to swerve to avoid it, and because she was angry at the van driver the skills she had not mastered, such as observation and being able to predict what other road users were going to do (she has only been driving five months) meant that her emptions had clouded ability to recall her skills fully and she therefore crashed. Thankfully everyone involved was unhurt but it made me wonder would I have crashed if I was in the same situation and I would tend to lean on the side of answering no. Firstly, the idiot van driver would not have angered me and if he had I would like to think my experience in driving would allow me to have a rant, probably swear at him, beep my horn and carry on with driving, Also, my overall driving skills are at a much higher level than Mrs Pudding's currently is so I would probably have braked quicker and maybe found a way that would not have resulted in the car in front being hit.

This is much like poker too. As I am fortunate enough to work on various poker circuits and mingle with some of Europe's bets poker players, I can discuss hands with them. These guys play much higher stakes than me and have played ten if not 50-fold the number of hands I have in my career so they have much more experience. Some of the spots they talk about would have seen me go broke or not even be in the hand at all but they have more experience and skills than me in areas such as hand reading etc. It is all down to experience and continuing to learn everything about the game.

The only way to develop skills in both poker and driving is to basically get out there and do as much of it as possible. Poker players need to play for hours on end and log tens if not hundreds of thousands of hands, whilst drivers need to first pass their test but then go out into the big, wide world and gain experience so that the skills they learn are honed to such a level that they are almost instinctive.

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