Beginner Series Part 11 - Communicating poker
A rundown of things to include when breaking down a hand with a friend or member of your team.
When I was in the 4th grade, I (hopefully) communicated differently than I do now. Why? - because things have changed. I am more educated. I have different goals, needs, and desires. The people I am communicating with have certain expectations that a rational conversation brings.
These above motivations are the reason I have subconciously worked on my grammar, diction, enunciation, and punctuation. These “English” skills are symptoms and byproducts of my motivations to be a better communicator not the driver.
Poker is much the same way. When we are starting out, the coolers and 2 outers upset us because our tournament demise was “against the odds”. As we mature through age and experience, we realize that worrying - or even reacting - about such things is a waste of our time. I will spend a lot more time contemplating a potential mistake that I made in a hand over an unfortunate runout because I have some control over the first and zero over the latter. I can learn from mistakes. I have yet to figure out how to learn anything meaningful from luck or the lack thereof.1
It should come as no shock that communicating a hand to a friend, coach, or peer is a learning curve as well. Once we understand that telling a bad beat story is of no use to the teller or the listener, we can - hopefully - close the door on that time vaccum and move on to communications that can help our game.
A few months back I wrote about Building a Team and the importance of discussing your game. While I believe in everthing I penned, it doesn’t help much when you want to ask your teammate if you played a hand appropriately if you don’t know all the information she would need.
While this list may sound daunting - depending on the checklist in your head each hand - if you practice it enough, all the information will reveal itself as important. Once you get the gist of it, you will begin noticing when other people tell hands that lack complete information and why that information is important.
When reviewing a tournament poker hand, the following information should ALWAYS be conveyed: Tournament Structure, Position, Stack Sizes (in Big Blinds), Blind Level, and Action.
Tournament Structure is an important piece of information and I think it should be the first piece of information with which to frame the entire hand. For instance, if a person comes to me with a hand and he starts the conversation with “This is a $1100 WPT Prime championship tournament with 40 minute blinds….. “, I am going to have a lot different picture in my head than if he started with “ I was in a $75 daily at Planet Hollywood and rebuys are still available….”. What’s more, in many cases the advice on the hand I would give would be different from the first scenario to the other. This is largely because the level of seriousness of the player pool will be different and the level of competition will be vastly different.
Position is probably the most important aspect of this game at stacks of over 30 big blinds. When reviewing a hand, the position of the hero and the villian(s) are going to matter a lot. Because opening ranges change with positions, a telling of a hand where “UTG opens the action to 2.2x and I called from the Button.” is quite different than “Cutoff (CO) opens the action to 2.2x and I called from the Button.” Because the UTG opening range is so much tighter, Button needs to have a servicable hand. In the latter scenario, Button can play back against the Cutoff much wider as the CO has a fairly wide range including some attempts to steal the blinds. Position matters. A lot.
Stack Sizes are probably the 2nd most important aspect of telling a hand and the one that gets fumbled the most. Let’s face it, it’s hard to remember that “I started with 59,000 in chips and villian had 37,000 making him the effective stack”. The key is to have a good idea of stack sizes of yourself and all your opponents. You’re not going to be exactly right every time but if you are considering who has you covered and what “place” you are in at your table, it will get you to paying attention to such things.
A suggestion I make to everyone playing tournament poker is to keep track of stacks in Big Blinds rather than chip count. There is some rounding up or down but it is much easier to know what to do with 12 BBs than 765,000 chips. Stack health and therefore action are typically decided using Big Blinds (or perhaps M). Therefore, we should probably communicate that way.
Communicating the Blind Level when the hand occured is important. If you tell me “Villian open raised to 5K from UTG+2 and it folded to me in the CO……”, I may assume the blinds are 1k-2k-2k but perhaps he is a maniac that is raising 5x at 500-1k-1k. These differences should affect hero’s calling and 3 betting range and will make his folding range much bigger in the second scenario.
Action is the component that nobody forgets to tell. I have heard a misremembering of the action many times but I have never heard “We were playing in a $400 WSOPC late level and I had 20 bbs vs villians 30 bbs. I lost.” Why do we never make this mistake? I think it is because we believe the action is the most important part of the hand and we would rather make it up than tell a story that doesn’t include it. The key is to get it right. If you forget that there was a 3 bet preflop or that the turn checked through, nobody is going to be able to give you a good answer on your actions.
That being the case and us not all having a photographic memory, how do we get all this right? The answer is to write it down. Jonathan Little tells us how he does it in this video. None of us want to be the nerd at the table - but get this straight, the people that are tournament crushers at the highest stakes are all nerds. If you don’t want to carry a notebook and pen, fret not as you likely have a recording device in the form of a phone at the ready. Just make sure you get the essentials down either by your voice in a recording or by your thumbs in notes.
I understand that the moment you lose a big pot is not the moment that you want to relive it and document it. However doing so will help in the short and the long run. By documenting the hand, you can allow yourself to move on to the next hand as you have essentially told yourself: “I will address this hand later for potential mistakes and I allow myself to let it go for now…. back to poker.” In the long run, you will get feedback on the hand and how you played it. If you made no mistakes, you can just let it go. If you made a mistake, no problem, now you can adjust in an effort to avoid that type of error in the future.
It’s also important to question your actions often. It doesn’t have to be a hand where you lost a big pot. Let’s say you call a 3 bet all in from out of position with AJo and win the hand. Well perhaps you want some clarity on that hand as well. This is a good time to note the hand and discuss with your coach or team.
Now we have gone over the musts for hand analysis. However there are other considerations that you should often state in your hand recap. Reads on villian, Tournament Structure, and ICM implications are a few.
Reads on Villian shouldn’t be overused. The idea that he was scratching his nose when he put in the raise likely has no bearing on the hand. However, if he has open raised 40% of the hands so far in the tournament and you are an hour in, it can be assummed that he is being aggresive with a wide range. This is the type of read that you should be looking for. Another is something you hear the player say. If you hear him say to his wife that his overall goal is to make day 2, that can be used against him and may sway the diagnosis of a hand against this person.
Tournament Structure is important in that having 15 minute blind levels is much different than having 1 hour blinds. The workability of a shorter stack changes a lot based on this structure. It could also be helpful if the blinds are going up momentarily. For instance “ The blinds were 500-1k-1k but were going to 1k-2k-2k the next hand and I had 12,000 with is 12 bigs but will be 6 momentarily…”
ICM implications. This is most powerful when on the money bubble or at the final table. On the bubble, the big stack at the table is likely to be more aggressive than average, the middle stacks will be much tighter, and the short stacks will be a bit tighter than typical. This information is important when sharing a hand because it changes the ranges of ALL players in one way or another. Because of this change to every player at the table, the stack sizes of ALL the players are important especially when short handed.
The bottom line is telling a complete story of what actually happened. It’s the only way that the person or persons from which we are seeking help will be able to analyze and give feedback that is worth receiving.
In an effort to give you an example, I will share a hand I had 18 months ago:
This hand is from a $2500 NLH tournament at the 2024 WSOP in Las Vegas. Reentries are closed and there are 525 players left of the 2250 entries. WSOP payed 15% that year so the bubble will happen around 340 players. WSOP mincash is typically 2x buyin.
The Blinds were 2k-5k-5k and I was working with a stack of 137k for a little over 27 BBs. I opened UTG to 10k with the KsQc. The action folded around to the button (245K) who called. The Small Blind folded and the Big Blind (75k) called. We will go 3 to the flop.
A note here that I know that the Button player is Mike Holtz. He is a solid mid stakes pro that has a good handle on what he is doing.
The Flop comes Jc2d4h.
BB cks, Hero cks, BTN bets 6k.
BB calls, Hero calls.
I made a note here that everone in the hand was taking his time and assumably thiniking before acting throught the hand.
The Turn card is the Qs.
BB cks, Hero cks, BTN bets 16k.
BB calls, Hero calls.
I was very happy to see this queen fall on the turn and the spade guaranteed there would be no backdoor flush. I debated betting it when it was on me. Instead, I decided that I would check it to Mike and hope that he would bet it again. My plan was to check raise him all in if he bet 15k - 40k. My delight - and plan - turned to debate when the BB called the 16k. I hadn’t planned for this and decided to simply call the 16k. My concern was for sets especially from the BB.
The River is the 5c.
BB cks, Hero cks, BTN (looks at my stack of 105k) bets 101k.
BB folds quickly, Hero tank calls.
When the 5 hits the river, I have some concern that the BB could have the wheel or I would have led this river. I stared Mike down before checking to him. Once he bets this size he polarizes to something pretty nutty or nothing at all. I know he is a good player and he is going to find some bluffs (or should) here. As far as value goes, I think A3 especially suited makes sense as does QJ. In the end, I felt like I under represented my hand and, while it is close, I should at least consider calling.
That’s the end of the story I need to tell my peers about this hand in order to get quality answers. Notice that the outcome of the hand isn’t really that important to the analysis and withholding it - at least temporarily - may garner more thoughtful feedback.
If you have any questions on communicating poker, hit me up in the comments or shoot me a line. If you want to know the outcome of the Holtz hand, I would be glad to give it to you ….. AFTER you tell me how you would have played it on each street. Let’s exercise that brain!
Club announcement: Because of the problems that were discussed in last weeks newsletter regarding PokerStars software, we asking club members to join ClubGG as a FREE member. Please do not pay anything as it isn’t necessary. If you join, please join club ID#516619. The club is titles Freezeout Poker.
We are not moving and this is not yet an official backup should there be a problem with Stars. However, I would like to get a few members and run a simulation tournament sometime soon to test the software. If it works to plan, we would institute this new club as an official backup plan for the rest of the coming season and I would feel comfortable paying out with money and points as with Stars.
We aren’t there yet but please join now and we can find out together. More info to come on dates and time for a simulation. You can join and play via your computer or device. Thank you for your time on this. If you have any questions or are having trouble, please email me at MikieCulpepper@gmail.com.
I sometimes tell people that I am writing a book on how to be luckier at the poker table. A working title is “Winning the Flips - A guide on how to be lucky on runouts”. Sadly, if I made a slick cover for it - and got the right pros to write a blurb about it - it would probably sell.