Monkey See, Monkey Do

Anything is possible. A July day could be cold, a politician could tell the truth, and the Red Sox could win the World Series. Remember that old hypothesis from statistics 101? If you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, one of them will eventually tap out the entire text of Hamlet. Of course, that's really stretching things, for while a thing may be theoretically possible, its improbability can be so great as to make the odds against its occurrence virtually incalculable.

Or so it used to be – before the latest generation of supercomputers came along. These babies can calculate anything. I'm not talking desktops here, I'm talking about the kinds of machines governments shovel dollars at by the millions – integrated networks with the speed and memory to perform massive simulations undreamt of only a few short years ago. It's an exciting time in the field of big numbers, and breakthroughs are occurring all the time.

One such breakthrough occurred earlier this year in Europe, where a team of mathematicians assembled to attempt the previously unthinkable – to actually put the Hamlet/monkeys problem to the test. With the use of Polonius 7, one of the fastest computers in the world, they ran an around-the-clock simulation that lasted 12 weeks and produced a startling conclusion: If you were to put 50 monkeys (albeit simulated, tireless monkeys, with no need for food or water) in a room with 50 typewriters, they would eventually reproduce the script of Hamlet – but it would take them, on average, 476 quatracillion attempts! If you're unfamiliar with the term "quatracillion," you're hardly alone – it contains more zeros than would fit in this paragraph.

The statisticians went on to determine that the same monkeys would reproduce The Catcher in the Rye once in every 188 quatracillion attempts, Gone With the Wind once in every 272 quatracillion attempts, and Mike Caro's Book of Tells once in every 157 quatracillion attempts. Flushed with success, the giddy scientists then got greedy, and contracted their services to a group of hold'em contrarians determined to prove that Q-7, long known as the "computer hand," really is the best starting hand in the game – at which point the system crashed, and the simulated monkeys organized and formed a union. While this left the scientists scratching their heads, animal behaviorists were unanimous in their analysis: Even simulated monkeys have their pride – and limits.

But seriously, folks.

Poker is a repetitive, high-volume activity, and the majority of hands we're dealt in our lifetimes, considered individually, yield no result: 9-2, into the muck; 7-4, into the muck; J-5, into the muck … and on and on it goes – 10-7, 6-2, 8-5, K-3 … Wouldn't it be nice if we could just hit the "zip to the next hand" button in a cardroom the way we can when we're fooling around with poker software at our desktops? Unfortunately, we can't, and the investment we put into the lion's share of poker hands is strictly one of time – the time spent waiting for playable ones. I recently saw a fellow sporting a T-shirt with a message that conveyed this same idea: "So many sessions, so few starting cards." So, what's a poor hold'em player to do with all of this downtime?

A popular choice is to play the poker version of "monkey see, monkey do" – which is to say, to follow the example of the legion of players who, once out of a hand, simply slip into a semiconscious state of poker fog. You know what a poker fog is – it's a thought process (to use the term loosely) that goes something like this: Gee whiz, isn't this hand over yet? Oh well, what's happening with the ballgame? Hey, Glenn, did you hear a Yankees score? Ooh, there's that pretty keno runner; she's hot, I've gotta get that girl's attention … Hey, dealer, change the cards, will ya? I can't sniff a winner with this red deck … Oh, Melody! Bring me a vodka martini, please, heavy on the olives. Thanks, kiddo, looking pretty sharp today … Did you change the cards, dealer? Well, you don't have to get snippy, I just asked, is all … Well, pardon me for living, I was watching something else … Hey, Glenn! See if you can get Santa Anita on this TV, would ya? Pssssst … Hey, buddy, what won that last hand, was there a showdown? No? Shoot, I really wanted to see what that guy in seat No. 3 raised with preflop; I'm trying to get a line on his play … What's that? There was a showdown? So, what did he have? Darn, you weren't paying attention either, huh? … and on and on and on.

Or, you could choose door No. 2, which is to say that you could observe the action – the action at the table, that is – and maybe learn something useful. The first choice is the poker equivalent of monkeys at typewriters. It's mental jabberwocky, nothing more. The second choice is the poker equivalent of … well, come to think of it, it isn't the poker equivalent of anything. It is poker, the nuts and bolts of the game.

Card tables aren't just card tables; they're classrooms, and school is always in session. But since we're not kids anymore, the assignments aren't mandatory, and no teacher will scold us if we spend our class time making paper airplanes and staring out the window. We're perfectly free to watch the ballgame, flirt with the waitress, and daydream about the lottery. Of course, these things aren't really "free" – for while we're vegging out, some of our opponents are busy building an edge. They're observing habits, tendencies, and behavior, creating an information gap between the poker watchers and the poker slackers that can be pretty darn profitable for the one and expensive for the other. The information you lack because you don't pay attention, when measured against the knowledge your opponents possess because they do … well, that's an information gap that can get pretty costly pretty fast.

It doesn't matter how many monkeys are in a room – Hamlet will never write itself. You can, of course, just pound at the keys and hope for the best, but you won't get very far. Excellence doesn't just happen, it has to be created. That's a matter of design, focus, and effort, a matter of looking, learning, and listening. Attention has to be paid at the table, and some serious thinking has to be done away from it.

If, on the other hand, you think you know it all, and there's no room in your game for improvement, something is truly rotten in the state of Denmark. Complacence is the enemy of the poker player; forward or backward, that's the only choice.

It was in his little-known sequel Hamlet in Vegas that Shakespeare said it best: To keep learning … or to stagnate … that is the question.

What's your answer?