As a resident of New England, I have followed the Patriots and Belichick’s career since the moment he took over as New England head coach. What hasn’t been said about this guy? He’s been called a genius, and the best coach of all time. He’s been called a fraud, and a cheater for the Spygate controversies. He seems to willfully spit in the face of anyone near him, whether it be the press, rival teams, or anyone who dares second guess him. Yet the one thing nobody seems to recognize is, Bill Belichick exhibits all the classic signs of a championship stakes poker player.
The first thing he has in common with an elite poker pro is his demeanor and style of dress. Rule #1 in the poker world is to always dress shabbily and never look the part. You give off an unsympathetic douchebag vibe, never betraying any emotions but in a way that conveys you think you know that much more than everyone else at the table. As if any word that escapes the lips of a champion could only improve the strategy of the other drooling bags of meat who dare call themselves competitors.
Not to mention, the classic douchebag poker outfit is a disgusting grey hoodie and headphones which block out any rival’s ability to communicate with you. You can adjust the volume of your noise cancellers in any way that you like, often such that you can spy on the rest of the table. You act like you can’t hear them, they can’t communicate with you, but really you’re just overhearing all that is said and is going on. Classic Belichick.
Poker player styles are classified in all sorts of ways, and Belichick embodies the player style which 99% of the playing world most deeply resents. I recognize these symptoms so clearly, because it’s the style I embody, and we are referenced by many slanderous labels. I’ve heard “ballcap kid,” “internet player,” and the most colorful hybrid of the two, “this fucking internet kid.” We think fast, play fast, and act fast. We apply endless amounts of pressure, show you looks you’re not familiar with or are extremely uncomfortable defending, all the while saying nothing, win lose or draw. (Silence is not always a common trait among my generation of players, but it should be).
Most importantly, like a savvy pro, Belichick runs the numbers and runs sims whereas other coaches rely on conventional wisdom and gut feelings (Spoiler alert: gut feelings in competition = fucking useless). For example, the Atlanta coach came under scrutiny this year for going for it on 4th down in his own territory rather than punting in back to a vaunted offense who could win the game with one score. The conversion attempt failed, and the football world was in an uproar. The most comedic exchange came with Mike and Mike the next morning as correspondents on SportsCenter. Greenberg defended the play after having run a mathematical analysis of probabilities in the long run, eventually determining Atlanta was 9% more likely to win the game by attempting to convert rather than punting. Golic responded, “I don’t care what the numbers say, you punt the football there.” Greenberg’s response of, “that is perhaps the most immature statement ever uttered on this network,” encapsulates the professional’s thinking in a nutshell.
You see this all the time in poker. People have stupid and endless theories about the relative value of pocket jacks, Ace-King, and other hands or situations based on nothing except gut feelings and limited samples. Or you can work with a massive sample, analyze the data, and derive a strategy. 99% of players don’t want to do that, however, and the result is often jaw-slacking stupidity.
An example: in one tournament I play, two players find themselves all-in on the flop. The aggressor had checkraised all in, and the caller found a way to play for close to his tournament life with fourth pair. The aggressor showed two over cards, an open ended straight draw, and a flush draw. The check-raiser can induce a fold some of the time (should be a great deal of the time against an underpair to the board) and anytime the guy finds a hero call here sets up a spot where the aggressor has around 72% to win across two cards. As it happened in this spot, he did connect, and did double through the player who found a highly suspect call. Here’s where it gets good.
Caller: I was ahead, you know.
Aggressor: No you weren’t, I was way ahead.
Caller [Rolling his eyes.] Well yeah. Maybe mathematically.
Nobody at the table says a word to the fish after that. It’s textbook Golic thinking. All this dude sees when he turns over his underpair to the board is that he has a made hand, the other guy doesn’t yet, so in his mind that means he’s a favorite to win. Mathematically is all that counts, and with fourth pair you are way the hell behind against his holding, which is to say nothing of all the made hand combos in his range which have you axe-murdered as well.
Belichick seems to make decisions based on positive equity in the long run more than any other coach. Which is to say, if he makes x decision over an infinite sample size, he’ll succeed at a rate that justifies the risk and therefore he attempts it. In fact, he does anything he can think of in order to produce points and create wins. Tom Brady has punted on third down multiple times in his career. Aaron Hernandez now routinely lines up in the backfield. They play hurryup offense the entire game. Julian Edelman plays WR, DB, and has a spot on every special teams unit.
