The Power of Storytelling

Save for Later

Sorry it has been a couple of days since my last post, but I have been doing some traveling and I hadn't had time to write. First thing I'll give you the weekend update (everytime I say that all I hear is Kevin Nealon in my head). I played a handful of tourneys over the weekend, The Fast Fifty, a PLO Freezout, PL HA tourney and the 1r all on Lock. I mananged to FT the PLO Freezeout and cashed the Fast Fifty and HA, almost cashed the 1r, where I busted on a stupid mistake (which led me to todays topic of choice). My NL cash is getting stronger and I am making solid leaps in improving my play and results there (also as a direct result of today's topic). So without further adu lets get into the core of the blog today.

I'll start by saying that this is something that people have been telling me for a long time and when reviewing my play have questioned me on a lot and it really hadn't clicked until I started looking through my HEM trying to fix my cash play and I started to investigate my tourney play and I saw a lot of the same mistakes there as well. So let me start with my main theory

Good Poker is all about solid, consistent storytelling.

That statement is a lot bigger than it appears to be. What am I really saying with that statement? What I am driving at here is really the more consistently you tell your stories (i.e. what your hands look like to opponents) the harder your play is going to be to decode and the more profitable you will be overall. So what are the mistakes that happen that cause poor storytelling? Lets take a look at an example or two and see what I mean:

Ex1.

HJ: raises to 3x

You: On the Button with 99 and you call. The blinds fold and we go HU to the flop in position

Flop: Ks-9h-2c

Okay, here we are we have flopped big on a flop where we aren't concerned about draws and there is a good chance that the original raiser could have an King in his hand so we have an opportunity to get his stack if we play well here.

HJ: bets about 60% of the pot (5bb)

You: What do you do?

So here is the first part, the HJ has bet here which we expect virtually 100% of the time (standard c-bet) so this is with basically his entire range. How many times have you just snapped raised here? Think about what you just did and the story you just told. You just clubbed his entire range with a hammer. If he has air, why would he continue you just screamed "I'M HUGE". If he does continue what do you do, what would he be holding here to flat your raise, or worse what the hell do we do if he shoves?!? Try a different tact, lets flat call the c-bet. In the story of the hand, what does that do for the story. He just c-bet, which he will be doing with his entire range here, and all we did was call, knowing that he should be doing this. Neither one of us really betrayed anything about our hand, with the one added benefit of emboldening the HJ player to think he may be ahead. You get to the turn and he check, now what? You have a couple of options, but lets think about the story telling and what could be going on. He bet and you called the flop and he could be thinking you were floating, you could have a middle pair, probably isn't going to think you had a monster, because afterall you would have started jamming chips in his face if you did right? So what does his check mean here? Could be 1 of two things, either he has air and is done with the hand (we won all we will win and go us) or he could be looking to check/raise us here as a trap here because what does our story tell him, that we aren't holding a premium. So why would we not ablidge the trap 🙂 We bet, he check/raises us and then boom we can jam/4bet him. There is nothing more satisfying that getting a villain caught up in the heat of the moment and stacking him.

Ex2.

HJ: raises to 3x

You: On the Button with AQs and you call. The blinds fold and we go HU to the flop in position

Flop: Qs-7h-3c

Okay, little different situation, but one that is a lot more common (remember 1 pair is the most likely improvement we will get in Hold'em). Lets look at the flop action:

HJ: checks

You: What do you do here?

Okay, here is where storytelling comes back into play. Think for a second what has happened. The HJ is the OR and we expect him to c-bet here virtually 100% of the time, but he checked?!? How many times have you bet here? How many times have you been check/raised in this situation? Welcome to a poorly created trap from the HJ. Storytelling works in both directions, and if he deviates from what the consistent story is, warning bells should go off. In this situation, check. He has decided to give you the opportunity to try to suckout on him (if he has an Q7 or Q3 hand) or we can get away cheaply if he has something like a set (only other logical holding on this board really).

So the key here is think about the story that is being told, think about the actions, both yours and the villians. You want your actions to be consistent without betraying what you are holding. This will go a long way to getting your monsters paid off because they will look an aweful lot like you air and TP type hands. I encourage you to go through your database and look at hands you won and hands you lost and see how the story telling evolved. See where you betrayed your hand and see where you didn't. Look carefully at how differently you played your monsters from your other hands, the information is enlightening. That's all for now. I'm hoping to sneak in some live play tonight here in CO, but we'll see what's happening. GL at the tables and all those out in Vegas! This is the Gman signing out.