Mike Rogers: Ever finish a match and realize your opponent wasn't just better than you, they had you figured out. Like they knew your serve was going wide on break points. They knew you were going to the backhand when things got tight. They were just waiting for you. That's happened to me more times than I want to admit. It's important to watch your opponent's game, but there's also a right way to view your own game during a match. My guest today is Tommy Rounds. Tommy, it's great to have you on the show.

Tommy Rounds: Great to be here with you, Mike.

Mike Rogers: So in poker, since that's your expertise, what does that mean to be exploitable?

Tommy Rounds: Exploidable just means that you have some sort of pattern or weakness where your opponents can take advantage of it predictably. So if you're a player who bluffs a lot, your opponents, when you make a big bet, they can actually call, which means to put more money in the pot as well.

Mike Rogers: a professional poker player who also works with tennis players on the mental and strategic side of the game. And what Tommy brought to this conversation kind of stopped me cold because he made me realize that the most dangerous thing you can be on a tennis court isn't weak. It's predictable. In this episode, Tommy breaks down how strong poker players deliberately mix up their plays so opponents can't get a read on them.

Tommy Rounds: more frequently than they normally should. And vice versa, if you never bluff, your opponents never have to call you unless they have an amazing, amazing hand. And it's a really bad spot to put yourself into because, know, the of poker is that we're playing a game of incomplete information. But if I'm predictable, ⁓ then opponents can play like my cards are face up and then exploit me.

Mike Rogers: and exactly how that translates to your serve, your ground strokes, and your decisions on big points. You're also going to hear one simple exercise Tommy uses with his players, and he calls it scouting yourself. That will change how you think about match prep. And if you've ever lost a match and wondered whether your opponent beat you or whether you just handed it to them, this one's for you. So let's get into it. All right, so that was Tommy Rounds. And I don't know about you, but I came away from that conversation looking at my own game a little differently and honestly in an uncomfortable way. Real quick, before I share my takeaways, if you liked this episode, please subscribe so we can grow the channel and bring you more folks like Tommy. Okay, here's what I want you to walk away with. First, your patterns are showing, especially on big points. do strong players intentionally kind of balance their plays so they're not always using their strongest move ⁓

Tommy Rounds: Absolutely. In fact, idea of balance was probably the biggest, I would say, dare I say revolution that came to modern poker. ⁓ in the day, people were very much like the old school look you in the face, look you in the eye, ⁓ to size you up and get a gut feel. And then also pattern based stuff as well. ⁓ the more modern kind of way of looking at things is to really pay attention to your own play and to think about, okay, what am I doing? ⁓ am I doing stuff that if somebody were to play with me for a while, would they be able to get a

Mike Rogers: the serve you always go to on breakpoint, the backhand you always attack in the third set, and that cross-court rally you never change up with a good down the line. Good opponents see all of it, even if they never say a word. Second, not all predictability is equal. Tommy makes a really useful distinction between pattern-based weaknesses and structural weaknesses. your opponent has a broken down backhand, hammer it all day.

Tommy Rounds: read on me. And so in order to avoid that, ⁓ when I'm working on my game, that's I'm spending probably 80 to 90 % of my time, ⁓ least now at this stage of my career, ⁓ about that kind of stuff. Like I'm in this spot, how often should I be bluffing? How often should I be playing ⁓ a hand here? Am ⁓ in a certain situation where I'm getting kind of loose and I'm not making those of adjustments and I'm not bluffing enough? ⁓ I'm to make sure ahead of time I'm kind of

Mike Rogers: They can't fix a stroke mid-match. But if it's just a pattern they've picked up on, they can adjust that in 30 seconds. So know the difference. Third, try the scouting report exercise before your next match. Sit down and ask yourself, if I had to play me, what would I go after? Not to beat yourself up. Tommy's clear about that. But just to see your own tendencies before your opponent does.

Tommy Rounds: beating them to the punch so they don't really have the exploit to get to.

Mike Rogers: So what happens at a poker table when somebody becomes too predictable? Does he go out early?

Tommy Rounds: Well, you can do all sorts of... ⁓ All sorts of pandemonium. mean, like if you're playing, like if I'm playing at a poker table, a lot of times it'll be a mixed table with amateurs and professionals. And if there's an amateur there who's not experienced, they might be extremely predictable. And so we'll do stuff like try to get in as many pots with them as possible. Try to engineer the hand in such a way where we put them in situations where ⁓ more predictable than they typically would be. And like I mentioned before, ⁓ can allow somebody like me to be end up in a spot where some

Mike Rogers: And the last thing, which I thought was the most honest moment in this whole conversation, Tommy reminded me that even the pros still have holes in their game that their opponents are looking for. So if you're playing at a four or four or five level or whatever you are, you're in good company. The goal isn't to be a mystery. The goal is to be just less of an open book than you were the last match.

Tommy Rounds: is essentially playing with their cards face up and I'm playing with my cards face down and it's kind of lights out at that point.

Mike Rogers: Thanks for listening to the playbook and I'll see you next time. Right, right. You know you're going to the bank after that. So how does this dynamic kind of show up in a tennis match based on your coaching experience?

Tommy Rounds: Yeah. Well. In tennis a lot of sports, think the traditional approach ⁓ to focus ⁓ all of the attention on what the opponent is doing. ⁓ there's nothing wrong with focusing on that. That's great. That's absolutely, you want to pay attention to that. You want to find exploits. You want to look for that stuff. But I think an underutilized place is for people to look at their own games and kind of, you know, try to be one step ahead and think, okay, I want to exploit their weaknesses, but what might I be doing that they could actually exploit me and kind of try to stop before it even happens because if you're somebody who's significantly weaker than you you can get away with a lot but once you start playing against people who are similar to your skill level or maybe even slightly you know a bit challenge for you they're going to be approaching things in the same way like they're going to be trying to exploit you as hard as you're trying to exploit them and if you're not paying attention to how you're exploitable might not ⁓ might not ⁓ end up on the right

Mike Rogers: So I play people that are sometimes a lot better than me, play D1 college, maybe even play professional, because in age group tournaments, they're open. can I try focus on myself or figure out what I'm doing ⁓ so he doesn't exploit everything that I'm showing him?

Tommy Rounds: Yeah, I would, you know, one little useful exercise that I say I think is good, and it can be a little bit tricky at first for some people, like some people don't want to go there, but... I like recommend people pretend like they're going to play themselves. Like imagine that you had to play yourself ⁓ in next round of a tournament. Like what your scouting report be? How would you take advantage of yourself? ⁓ And ⁓ can, I mentioned it's a little bit rough on some people is some people feel like it's kind of like beating up on themselves. ⁓ But that's not purpose. The purpose isn't to kind of say, ⁓ these are all the places I'm not good. It's just more or less to see knowing what I know. Let's that I'm playing against this hyper perfect opponent who can basically know everything about me. they knew everything about me, ⁓ would they go after? And if there's certain things there that you realize you're like, you know, when a pressure point, I have one serve that I like to go to because it's my favorite serve. ⁓ Those things to recognize and realize because ⁓ somebody really good is going to be paying attention and they're going to start to see those things and they're going to realize, ⁓ you every break point on the outside, Mike just, has that up to T serve. just, he just goes through it every time he's comfortable with it. And so the out of that is to recognize that first because if you don't recognize it there's nothing you can do about it until it's too late. So look to yourself try to kind of do that little scouting report thing and see what you might be doing then and then try to ⁓ mix up there in those spots and essentially ⁓ don't it to happen.

Mike Rogers: I think that's a great concept and something you can easily do because and I've been focusing more on the opponent lately because I felt like I was always focusing on my game, but not necessarily in the way that I'm trying to figure out how could I beat myself, but more along lines of beating myself up and why can't I hit that shot? Why can't I do that? So and.

Tommy Rounds: Right. And that's what you want to avoid. You want to avoid the whole thing of beating yourself up because you don't want to end up in that situation where you're fighting the battle of your opponent, but then also the battle of yourself. And like you said, what I'm referring to is more or less just looking and seeing are there patterns that I might be predictable and not, Hey, what are all the ways that I'm a horrible tennis player? And you know, it's not like that at all. It's, it's, it's more of a positive thing in the way that I look at it. And like I said, it's something that I do all the time. And it's actually great because you find those things and it's exciting. It's not a disappointment or something to feel bad about. It's great because I can go, okay, I see that now and I'm going to try not to do that as much. Or I'm going to carefully do it against the right opponents.

Mike Rogers: Well, and it's funny you say, you know, like say I'm always serving out wide and and I guess, you know, if I can hit that exact spot that I need to hit so that he can't get to it every time, that's one thing. Of course, then he'll adjust or they'll adjust. But, you know, it's funny when I'm watching pro tennis, I hear the commentators sometimes say, ⁓ when when it's 3040, they always serve down the T. so it's like they're calling it all the time. So if they know it, I'm sure the opponent probably knows it as well.

Tommy Rounds: Absolutely, yeah, they're doing scouting for it. They're looking at it as well. And like you said, even the pros at this point still have those little holes and stuff that they might not have fully plugged up yet.

Mike Rogers: So why do you think we fall into the trap of trying to just repeat what worked and do that?

Tommy Rounds: think it's comfortable and I think that the instinct is to kind of think back on memories of what was really comfortable and what worked. Like especially in tennis, I think there might be certain strokes that just feel better. Like it might just feel better to hit cross court in a certain situation just because of the way your hips open and all that stuff. Or maybe you had a like a lot of people get really emotional about certain things for like if they had a one bad match where they went for it on match point and Then they missed and they're like I'm never do I hated the way that that felt to lose that way I'm never gonna allow myself to lose that way. ⁓ think there's just lot of that. I think that There's things that feel like they work. There's things that they're comfortable that are comfortable. ⁓ But I think that there's just a lack of awareness sometimes too

Mike Rogers: Yeah. get so caught up in the moment that you're, you you're just what you you should be doing, I guess.

Tommy Rounds: Absolutely, it's happened to me plenty of times as well. And that's one of those things where it's useful to kind of look back at yourself. I've had that happen in actual in sessions where I'm like, you know, I haven't been bluffing at all. And it's not because I haven't had an opportunity like something like I'm not I need to I need not do this because nobody's caught on to it yet. If if I keep going, it's going to happen.

Mike Rogers: You So you talk about bluffing, how can we do that in tennis?

Tommy Rounds: You know, that's a good one. Bluffing, think bluffing would be... Drop surprisingly, can function like a bluff. ⁓ Hopefully isn't too out there, but I think it's kind of a fun one because it's Alcaraz, so follow me around this one. ⁓

Mike Rogers: you Yeah.

Tommy Rounds: Alcraz obviously is an incredible player his strokes from the back court are just amazing, but his drop shot's also amazing. ⁓ ⁓ of the kind of cool things with the drop shot and how it works for him ⁓ that it functions kind of like a bluff. So when his opponents are trying to dig in and defend side to side ⁓ laterally, ⁓ he throws in that drop shot, it kind of makes it so they can't just only focus on side to side. They have to put some effort into vertical defense. But once they do that, they give up on the side to side. ⁓ And so in the same way in poker, I, if I bluff. My opponents have to call me some of the time when I have a good hand, but if I never bluff, they don't have to. Likewise with off-gras, if he just dropped the drop shot from his game, his opponents could probably step back three or four feet on the baseline and just focus 100 % on just digging balls back on the ground. But once he throws that drop shot in, it's kind of his bluff that forces them to not do that, move in a few steps, and it's ⁓ really valuable. And I think the other way you could do the sort of bluff... would be just appropriately mixing up like on your serve. think it's ⁓ really valuable not to get caught up in the whole thing of I have this favorite serve that I like ⁓ I'm gonna do it. It's just really, really valuable to be able to have ⁓ couple, at least a couple different locations ⁓ make it so your opponent just is kind of like, I don't know what's gonna happen here, you know? ⁓ absolutely. ⁓

Mike Rogers: and maybe a slice or even a kick, you know, go kick on your first and...

Tommy Rounds: Yes, absolutely. That mixing up can really throw people off.

Mike Rogers: I know one thing I like is, you know, I'll be hitting, you know, some, I, for my age, I hit a hard serve sometimes then I'll just serve a little dinky serve ⁓ it's all of a sudden.

Tommy Rounds: Exactly. Yeah, it's like a change up in baseball. The baseball pitchers do the same thing. not just throwing fastballs every time. They're mixing it up for that same reason. It's their form of bluffing.

Mike Rogers: Exactly. So I guess, you know, when we're talking about buffing too, it's, you know, you're always told, you know, hit to the hit to the person's back end, you know, maybe you shouldn't do that on big points sometimes or cause they're expecting that.

Tommy Rounds: Exactly and that's the weakness of that and if you do it all the time and it's predictable your opponent has the ability to adjust for that. Like they can shift over, they can do it in ways too that might be sneaky. Like they can wait until you're about the way you put your head down to hit and then they could shift over and just jump immediately and try to get some mileage so you don't figure it out as quickly. But they can absolutely do that, they can protect it and then they can start to predict where you're gonna hit it and... it loses a lot of that value. has the value, hitting to the back end to a back end has value when the person has to move a little bit for it. And then they also have to kind of prepare and they're not quite sure. There's a little bit of a lag between not sure where the ball's gonna go.

Mike Rogers: Mm-hmm. So going a little deeper on that, how would you decide when to keep exploiting a weakness or when to just change gears?

Tommy Rounds: Yeah, that's a great one. think that, you know, of the things in tennis that's a bit different than poker. So ⁓ we primarily have what I would call pattern based weaknesses or predictability ⁓ It's just like. this person does this and these sorts of scenarios. Tennis has those as well, like somebody likes to certain spots, but there's also execution weaknesses as well. So there's that element of execution that happens. ⁓ And there might be a stroke weakness that somebody has. And if somebody has a stroke weakness, like their backhand, the technique is just not there, ⁓ or they don't move as well to that side, that would be a situation where I would be more inclined to say, you know what, if you can hit it there, just go to the well over and over and over because even if they figure out that you're going to do that, not going to really fix their stroke in the context of a match. They're going to have to do it on the practice court. So the pattern-based weaknesses are the ones where I'd be more ⁓ reticent to go all in on because once somebody recognizes what you're doing from a pattern-based perspective, they can make a shift very quickly and very easily. But if you discover some sort of structural weakness, the stroke-based or physical, you can really, really hammer on those and really nothing they can do about it, at least in that match, generally speaking. ⁓

Mike Rogers: Good advice, good advice. So if a senior player wanted to be harder to read starting in their next match, so I don't want that guy to know what I'm doing. What's one simple adjustment that I could make?

Tommy Rounds: Serve definitely, again, I'm sure you've seen this and I've seen it as well. People have their favorite serves. Even if they kind of hit one to the other spot, they might hit 90 % to one spot or 80 % to one spot. would definitely, unless one of your sides to the serve is just so much better than the other, then I would try to get it closer to 50-50 where your opponent feels like it's kind of a coin toss. If you hit up the body, you can kind of mix those in as well, but if you're trying to hit directions then I would definitely try to do that on the serve. On the ground strokes I think it, depending upon what your strategy is, I think it's wise like if you're somebody who likes to a lot of cross courts that's great that can be super fundamental in sound tennis but it's also important to mix in a little bit of down the lines every now and again even when the court's not open just so your opponent can't camp in the cross court spot. I'm sure you've probably seen this but people get in these cross-court rallies and they don't ever even go back to the center. ⁓ get so, you know, the ball's going there so they don't do anything and ⁓ what you don't want to do. You want to kind of toss in at least a few down there so your opponent, if your opponent ends up in a situation where they don't recover, you know that you're being too predictable and you need to mix it up a little bit more.

Mike Rogers: Right So I think what you're saying too is if you're not really a good server where you can't place your serve, you're going to be very unpredictable.

Tommy Rounds: Well, that's exactly, And you know, ⁓ really is nothing wrong with ⁓ being unpredictable in that sense, or there's nothing wrong with if you don't know where it's going to go to just make the adjustment to just hit up the middle ⁓ and box and just do what you can. And you're not going to hit it up the middle every time, because if you had that level of control, you'd be able to hit to where you want it anyways.

Mike Rogers: Yeah, well, you hit that great out wide serve that you get an ace, you were really going down the T. So. ⁓

Tommy Rounds: And nobody but you needs to know that.

Mike Rogers: Exactly. Well, fantastic. there ⁓ anything else you'd like to add?

Tommy Rounds: Yeah, I would just say, you know, pay attention to those sorts of things. Like I mentioned, just know that your opponents, when you're playing against people who are better than you or around your skill level, are going to be looking for your patterns. cognizant of that. But the same time, just recognize that ⁓ it's valuable certain situations, but it's not a straight jacket. You can sometimes go after the things. You just have to know whether it's what kind of a weakness you're going after.

Mike Rogers: and do it on the right point score. Well, I'm sure some people might want to get in touch with you. What would be the best way?

Tommy Rounds: Absolutely. They can contact me on my website, ⁓ gamesetmatchanalytics.com through the form there, or they can directly email me at tommy at gamesetmatchanalytics.com.

Mike Rogers: Thanks again, Tommy.

Tommy Rounds: Thanks for having me, Mike.