If I am lucky enough, on the weekends I will eventually find myself at the local Border’s where I sample various books trying to figure out what to commit to read next. It is inevitable that of the selections I read, I will draw correlations to poker.

Last weekend I read through parts of former San Francisco 49er and Stanford University Head Coach Bill Walsh’s The Score Takes Care of Itself. It is a business leadership book and for the most part contains the information one would expect to find in a leadership book, with anecdotes taken from his coaching days to provide the examples that tie the material together. There was one subsection of a chapter called “Zero Points for Winning…Means You’re Losing” that discussed Walsh's personal experience with something I call a "negative scoring system".

THE CONCEPT
In the text Coach Walsh talks about how when operating at the top end of the competitive scale many people, in many different walks of life, cope with the fact that losing causes some pain or anguish. He goes on to state that the fear of failure is a distinct part of the competitive nature due to the pain that is caused by loss, but we must work to control this fear of failure. The real danger is that the desire to succeed, when misshapen, has the potential to psychologically cripple us as our flawed expectations push us into a situation in which we give ourselves “Zero Points for winning…[and] minus points for losing.”. At this point we have entered a negative scoring system - a mental state where our expectations cause us to acknowledge failures and ignore success.

WALSH’S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
When he started out with the 49ers Walsh took great pride in any improvement that he could make to the team as a whole as well as individual players. His satisfaction and sense of accomplishment were closer to being more process driven and less results oriented. Over time, the process got away from Coach Walsh and he found himself in a spot where even winning week to week wasn’t enough. The progression of Walsh’s situation went like this (taken from the text):

1. In the beginning teaching players to execute and perform at higher levels provided satisfaction and gratification. This success was reinforced by increased stats (more yards/carry, fewer turnovers, etc.), but winning was not an issue; good play and execution were enough to provide the feelings of accomplishment.

2. Later, good play and execution were satisfying as long as they were accompanied by a win.

3. Finally, good play and execution even if accompanied by a win resulted in only temporary relief from the fear of pain (loss).

At this point, Walsh stated that he was giving himself “zero points for winning”. Even if he won this week, next week was another opportunity to lose. He had become entrenched in a negative scoring system.

NEXT TIME
Over the next few blog entries we will take a closer look at how the negative scoring system impacted Coach Walsh and those around him. We will also use what we learn from Walsh's observations to look at a couple of poker examples as well as ways to keep ourselves from engaging in negative scoring systems.