Jan

4

I had a conversation with a fellow the other day who just came back from a trip to the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Miss., from a major poker tournament. He lost early in the tournament and was quite disillusioned as to his play. He felt that he played poorly and shared with me his feeling that he needs to go back to the beginning and get some help to improve his chances of success.

I shared with him a comment that I heard on TV the other evening from Mike Sexton, poker host of the WPT and himself a very accomplished poker player. Mike personally has seen every great, near great and former great poker player of the last 25 years play. He said that the goal of a poker player is to play each hand correctly. In a game that provides imperfect and limited information, along with the fact that you have little or no control over the events that happen during a tournament, including the cards you are dealt, that is all you can do. The rest is up to fate.

Daniel Negreanu says that his goal in playing in every tournament that he enters is to not make any mistakes that will cost him the tournament.

I had the honor of hearing John Wooden speak at a seminar some years back. For those who are not familiar with John Wooden, he is the legendary coach of the UCLA Bruins, who won 10 NCAA basketball titles in 12 years and coached such famous athletes as Kareem Abdul Jabaar and Bill Walton. His team once won 88 straight games, and he is one of only three people who are inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach.

He mentioned that during his tenure as coach, he never talked to his players about winning and losing, he always stressed the fundamentals of the game and playing to the highest possible level that they could. Their goal was always the same, to work as a team, play as a team, and the rest would take care of itself.

I find in life that the greatest obstacle we have in front of us is often ourselves, and the limitations we place upon us.

In 1968 at The Olympics in Mexico City, Bob Beamon shattered the world long jump record by an unbelievable leap of 29′2 1/2″. This bested the previous mark of 27′4 3/4″ by 21″. It was such an extraordinary achievement that Sports Illustrated analyzed the jump with state-of-the-art illustrations in their follow-up issue. Physicists and scientists who were interviewed were astounded by this and suggested that it was such an amazing and perfect feat, a stupifying confluence of form and fortune, that it might never be approached again. It wasn’t until the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo that Carl Lewis broke the record while leaping over 29′ three times in one day and setting the mark at 29′2 3/4″ wind aided and 29′2 1/4″ unaided. Unfortunately for Lewis that was not even the longest jump of the day. Mike Powell unleashed an unfathomable jump of 29′4 1/2″. A mark that stands until this day.

It was Vince Lombardi legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers who won five NFL Championships in seven years, and who has the Super Bowl trophy named after him who said:

The good Lord gave you a body that can withstand almost anything, it is your mind that you have to convince.


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