As I trampled home on my bike from last night’s floor hockey game, I started thinking about what we could have done better (we lost with 6-0). We talked some about it in the lockerroom and I suggested that we’d stop doing the sideway passes right in front of our own box, as they were easy for the other team to intercept and score on. Someone (correctly) pointed out that none of the 6 goals that we let slip that night were actually due to a situation like that.

My immediate reaction was to think about how being results oriented is wrong; how being lucky tonight didn’t change the fact that those passes had a “negative expectation.” I then proceeded to figure that in the last 4-5 games, about half of those passes in dangerous situations had gotten intercepted, and that about one third of the intercepts had led to goals for the opposing team. So on average, those passes had an expectation of -1/6 points. Not good.

Why am I bringing this up? Because it’s an aspect that I think good gamblers are uniquely able to perceive - looking at the expectation of an action and adjusting accordingly. My teammate wrongly asserted that the sideway passes weren’t the problem tonight, and I disagreed; I counted to four of them in highly volatile situations, which means that we had a net of -4/6ths of a point just because of that. Attacking the problems that we can fix makes a lot more sense than focusing on situations where we played as best we could, but we got unlucky. Like the backwards goal, where the ball bounced off of Mårten’s leg and I couldn’t reach it (I’m the keeper). Bad luck. Should he have acted differently? No - he was the defender, and he was positioned correctly. It’s unfortunate that the ball bounced the way it did, but another 100 shots pretty much just like that one would probably only result in 5 goals. The negative expectation for that situation is way lower than for the sideway passes.

Look at situations in terms of what you would have done differently if you had to do it again with the same information. Outcome is not important, because you can’t retroactively affect outcome - you can, however, affect how you would act in an identical situation should it occur again. And that’s how you improve.

I played some NL ring today; flopped the nut straight with my KQs. I managed to get all of my money in the pot, and the other guy hits his boat on the turn. It stings, but I didn’t for a second doubt the way I played it.

I also managed to get all of my money into the middle with KK preflop. There was a significant risk that I was up against AA, but I decided that I would more often be up against one of AK, QQ or JJ. Unfortunately for me, it ended up being AA - but given the same circumstances, I would play it the same way again.

/FP