How Poker Excelled My Writing

Poker, specifically Texas Hold’em, is a card game where you bet multiple times that you’re going to have the best five cards on the table. Writing is the act of sharing a very human experience by taking a reader through an emotional journey. Makes sense that one would inform the other, right? No? Is it just me? 

Alright, let me explain. 

I learned how to play poker from a good friend of mine. Let’s call him Melvin (no, not THAT Melvin). Melvin walked me through the basics of how to play poker. You get dealt two cards. You have to choose whether to play those two cards, or fold them. You do this by understanding what cards have better odds - such as a pair. 

Still with me, right? Because here’s where poker gets fun. 

The next stage of a poker hand is called the FLOP. Three cards are dealt face up on the table. This informs you how strong your two cards are. Remember, you want the best five-card hand out of all the players - and everyone uses the table cards. If your cards line up, you can make some great hands. 

We do a round of betting on the FLOP. Another card is laid face up - this is the TURN. We do another round of betting. One final card is laid face up - this is called the RIVER. We do a final round of betting. 

And then you flip your cards over (or fold them if you want to admit defeat without showing them). 

lesson one: the bluff

In poker, you know there’s a thing called bluffing. When a poker player is bluffing, they’re indicating to the table that they have a winning hand, but they are lying. Movies LOVE to have genius poker players figure out the expert bluff by very minor tells - indicators that prove to the protagonist that the player is bluffing. 

I don’t know about Rounders or Casino Royale, but Melvin taught me how to read a poker player. He did it by giving me a lesson that we get taught all the time in writing. 

CHARACTER IS DISCOVERED THROUGH CHOICES

Melvin taught me to play poker online. There were no bloody tears or oreos. There were just avatars, cards, and bets. Melvin taught me a lot here, which I’ll get into below, but he taught me to watch for patterns in how players bet pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river. 

Let’s say you have a fantastic hand. You want to bet a lot of money, so you’ll win a lot of money. You’ll keep doing this until you win as much as you can. Poker is awesome! 

Now let’s say you have a mediocre hand. If you want to bluff, you’re going to bet as if your hand is fantastic. The flop comes. Your hand went from mediocre to terrible. You bet hard again - you’re still bluffing - but people aren’t folding. In fact, someone raises you! Their actions indicate they liked the flop. You’re going to lose all your money. Poker sucks! 

Great poker players understand that their actions are giving away the story of how they like their cards. Great poker players can altar that story to suit their needs, if they know that other players at the table are reading that story. This is how poker becomes a really fun and interesting game. 

We learn our players by watching HOW they bet. Melvin taught me to discern that if a player is aggressive pre-flop, then commonly backs off if the wrong cards land on the table, you can safely bet that person out of the hand - whether you have the cards or not. That player has already told you they’d fold. That is how you bluff at poker. 

Many players make quick money being aggressive with betting. They often have a wide range - sometimes bad hands, sometimes okay hands, sometimes great hands. I love these players. I wait until I have a great hand pre-flop. I pay as little as possible, following their lead, to the flop. I either have a great hand now, or I don’t. If I don’t, I’ll fold. If I do, I’m going to be extremely aggressive against the other player - because I know they have a wild range. 

Those aggressive players lose a lot of money trying to bluff me off a great hand. They always seem so surprised. How did I assume I was strong in that hand? Well, I played great cards, and I know there’s a bigger chance their cards were mediocre than they were great. Could I still lose? Sure - but my guesses are highly educated, and I win more money from these players (and a lot of patience) than I do from anyone else at a poker table. 

That’s a lot of fun, and I can talk about poker all day long. 

But Melvin taught me a far more valuable lesson in writing. This lesson is one I’ve fallen back on time and time again, and if you aren’t doing this - it will change your life. 

LESSON TWO: THE MIRROR DECIDES WHETHER YOU WERE SUCCESSFUL

Melvin wanted me to be a good poker player, but he wouldn’t be at my side to teach me whenever I played. Instead, he set out goals for us, and they were simple. 

Did you win the maximum amount of money you could from the hand? 

Did you mitigate the losses to the maximum extent you could in a hand? 

If I win a lot of hands by going ALL IN before the flop, am I achieving my goals? No. First, winning a couple bucks before the flop is usually only minor gains. Second, it’s a major risk. I have no information about the other player’s hands at the table. My goal isn’t to win hands - it’s to win chips. 

After particularly big hands, Melvin would analyze what the opposing players did, and what I did. A bonus to playing online (since you can’t read their body language), is you can watch their card history. You won’t see what they had unless that was revealed in the hand, but you can take your time to talk about each stage of betting. 

Melvin would look through a hand where I lost a lot of chips. I bet strong pre-flop. I bet strong on the flop. I got concerned on the turn, and bet weaker. I folded on the river. I lost a lot of money, and lost the hand. If he agreed that I made the right choice at every stage, he would praise me. 

IF I MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE, AT THE RIGHT TIME, AND STILL LOST, WE CONSIDERED THAT A WIN!

Many poker players lament when they fold, and the flop reveals they would have had a great hand. This is useless to us. If you have bad cards and you fold them, you made the right call at the right time. That’s a win. 

Don’t believe me? Let’s scrutinize that logic. If you play your bad cards to see the flop, the majority of the time you’re going to lose a lot of chips fast to pre flop bets against good hands. The flop comes, you missed, you folded. 

But when your bad cards do hit, you might make some good money. Over the long run, you will lose a lot more than you gain - because these instances are so much more rare. The goal is to mitigate losses by making correct decisions with the knowledge we have. 

I play a casual game with some fun people. One guy at the table is very strong. He’s aggressive with great hands, and often only plays the best hand possible. He doesn’t go into hands often, and he folds often. I have lost a lot of money to this player, because I’ll have a really great hand while he has the best hand.

I realized this was a major weakness of mine, because Melvin taught me to analyze my play after every single game. For years. So one week, I’m at the table with a pair of Jacks, and the flop looks good. But my rival is being aggressive. I’ve seen this story before. He does that when he’s in excellent shape to win. I have an extremely strong hand, and no reason to fold based on the cards on the table. 

I fold. My rival had three sevens - trips - which he got thanks to the flop. 

I lost some money in that hand. It was a MAJOR WIN for me. I read my rival’s story correctly, and I played the cards CORRECTLY. 

And others see it. One player told me (to my dismay) that he knew I was the best player at the table. It was a fact to him. I’ve never been given such poker praise, and it went straight to my head - I lost a lot of money that night! Whoops. I don’t love when players think I’m the best - I love when they don’t notice me, or underestimate me. But it does feel good to be the best at something in your group, even if other players could debate it. 

Still with me? Let’s get to writing! 

Melvin set an interesting goal in poker: make the best choice in the moment. 

This standard forces me to be proud of a perfect night of poker choices even if I lose every penny. Bad luck happens in poker. That’s why it’s called gambling - but if I made the correct choice every step of the way, I can hold my head high. 

It was never about winning or losing. It was about playing correctly. 

Let’s apply that to writing. Screenwriting and novels are a hard medium to break into. There’s lots of competition, there’s lots of false gurus, there’s lots of rejection. There’s so much out of your control as a writer. 

Except the story. 

I measure success, as a writer, if I’m writing an emotionally compelling story on a professional level. Want to judge me for yourself? Check out my debut novel: The Five Cursed Kingdoms: The Stone of Despair. I am immensely proud of this novel. I told the story I set out to tell, and I was genuinely surprised by the joyous response I received - and who I received it from. 

Regardless of how the novel does, I feel I rose to the level of professionalism that constitutes a win. Writers, I implore you to set this as your standard. 

If your goal is to sell a book, learn marketing. 

If your goal is to write professionally, and professionals aren’t interested in your work, find out why. This is really frustrating advice, and brings with it a lot of problems, but if you can do this, your writing will improve by leaps and bounds. 

When trying to achieve this goal, you have to avoid false gurus. You have to find people at a higher level than you. Odds are high you’ll have to pay them. You have to be able to measure your work against other professionals and be able to understand whether you’ve hit the mark. 

I didn’t do this alone. My wife studies professional writing, and has been a great boon to this goal. My best friend as well - though his studies were recreational, his knowledge is all-powerful for my purposes. 

In screenwriting though, my allies couldn’t push me higher. I hit a wall where my scripts were pretty good, and people liked them. The scripts just weren’t helping me. Good isn’t great - and great is what I needed. 

Again, my goal here was not to sell a script (please buy my scripts), but to write professionally. So I found professionals I trusted, and learned from them. 

Damn, I was doing a LOT of good in scripts, but I had missed the mark on some key elements. We can get into that for another blog - I haven’t proven to myself I have achieved the goal yet, but I’m working my ass off on it and can’t wait to share when it happens. I learned an extreme amount in a very short time. 

At this point in my life, I can’t predict whether I’ll be a career screenwriter yet, but I can tell you that I’m learning from the pros. I’m elevating my writing. It was pretty good. It got some minor attention. I was a decent amateur. But Melvin taught me poker. Anyone can win a hand in poker given enough time and money. Anyone can get lucky. 

I don’t want to be a decent amateur. I don’t want to be a great amateur. I want to be a beginner professional. Then a working professional. 

My goal in writing is professional work. Make that your goal, and your entire approach to the craft is going to change forever - anyone can share stories or publish their book. Write like a professional, that’s not something the majority of writers set out to do. 

But you can do it. You should do it, if you want to be a working writer. Never base your pride, your wins, your losses on sales. Base them on whether you wrote like a professional, and did the absolute best you could on a professional level. You can’t account for chaos - but you choose your own mindset. 

Writing is a marathon. Your mindset decides whether you’ll cross the finish line or not. I believe in you!