Analyzing your hand history - How do you go about doing this?

punctual

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So I have hundreds of thousands of hands in my hand history. There's a lot of info there....in fact, the secret to my success/failure is in there somewhere too.

How does one start analyzing historical data to pinpoint mistakes in one's play? Previously, I had been looking over my hand history every night for the games I had played during that day; I was doing this for a very long time until it became too cumbersome. I don't think going through every single hand is necessary.

So I was thinking the smarter way to go about this would be to see which hands I've lost hte most money with from each position and start there.

How do you analyze your historical hand history? Have you noticed dramatic differences in your play after starting to do this? Would love any input my fellow CC members can offer.

Thanks
 
naruto_miu

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I'm in too also learn how to do that, as I haven't the slightest clue
 
AlfieAA

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its a good question man, and its something im interested in looking at too...I only ever use the HUD and never look at all the other stuff..figured I would play lots of hands and tourneys and let the data become worthwhile to analyse with larger samples...

hope you can get the answers you are looking for....could be an interesting thread :)
 
fletchdad

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Subbing. I would also be interested in what people have to say about this.
 
punctual

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its a good question man, and its something im interested in looking at too...I only ever use the HUD and never look at all the other stuff..figured I would play lots of hands and tourneys and let the data become worthwhile to analyse with larger samples...

hope you can get the answers you are looking for....could be an interesting thread :)

I think analyzing your play is probably the most important thing you can do as a poker player. For a long time I'd do it the same day but i haven't dopne this in months...my play has probably suffered from not continuing this practice.
 
AlfieAA

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I think analyzing your play is probably the most important thing you can do as a poker player. For a long time I'd do it the same day but i haven't dopne this in months...my play has probably suffered from not continuing this practice.

absolutely man, agree totally...ive never really analysed my own game up until this point, but have plans of doing it very soon..its very important as you say in improving your game...

as for analysing historical data as a whole, I think it could be tricky...in that if we see our overall stats for a particular game over many thousand hands or x amount of tourneys, then what can we learn from these 'overall' stats compared to analysing things from session to session of which I think would be more useful...because as we know, every session is different from the last with the players being different etc...so judging overall stats would be pretty pointless imo....could be correct to play tight in one session and loose in the next..table dynamics vary all the time..

so, maybe its best to analyse our games on a weekly basis or after each session....or sessions where interesting things happened..i don't know lol
 
10058765

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First of all, I'm by far not an expert, though I'll try to give some things for thought, which ofcourse are open to discussion.

So why do we start analyzing hands anyway ?
Pretty obvious eh ? To improve our play, to increase our winnings or, worst case scenario, to limit our losses.

So, which hands to analyze ? The hands in which we can improve (in which we made mistakes) AND which are most common.
The hands in which we lose the most are not the most common and almost never hands in which we can improve.
This is because, unless you're a spewtard, these are most of the times hands in which we were coolered or brutally beaten by an ugly turn- or rivercard, thus losses which, most of the time, we cannot avoid.

Coming to the point...the most common hands are not AA,KK or QQ so if you want to analyze those you'll be finished pretty fast, because there's not so many of them and most of the times they played pretty straight forward.

Analyzing very common hands we folded pre because of being trash is useless, so we have to look for common hands we like to play but are unsure about.
Well, I guess that's connectors (suited or not), one-gappers, any suited cards, A9+ and pocket pairs upto JJ , so basically hands with wich we can gain a lot postflop but could also get us in trouble there.

I'd say start categorizing these hands.
Don't go overboard analyzing a suited connected hand to continue with a pocket pair hand. They play totally different, so stay with one category.
One or a few analyzing sessions you concentrate on the suited cards.
After a while (hopefully having found some leaks), you start analyzing for example your unsuited Ax hands, and so on...

Now the technical part, what do we need to analyze our hands effectively ?
Well a tracker would be perfect, but even just a replayer could be fine.
Add some equity-calculating software and we're equiped to start the job.

The analyzing itsself.
One of the flaws of hand analyze is, most of the time we don't remember what we were thinking during the hand when it played (assuming we were thinking), which leaves our mindset outof the analysis.

Though, when we start with a hand we're gonna try to go through that thinking proces again and we're gonna try to make our decision making in certain situations to be second nature.
Therefor we have to ask ourselves questions during the replay of the hand and we're gonna answer those questions ourselves, meanwhile judging our own answers.

For example...we start the replayer with a hand we have 10-9s in the small...it folds to the button who makes it 3x....stop the replayer and start questioning.
What could be the most logical range he opens with ?
Should I fold,call or 3-bet and most important...why ?
If I 3-bet, how much ?
Whenever you think you got the answer, restart the replayer and see what you did.
Stop the replayer again and compare your answer to the decision you made while playing the hand.
Judge your decisions on every street and try to find the spots where you went wrong.
Try to find your motivation behind decisions and judge them.
Ask yourself if you got the right prize to draw, calculate your equity against your opponent's range.
Compare similar hands with eachother.....why did I fold here and call there with similar hands ?

Playing poker is about making decisions....analyzing your hands is about questioning and judging those decisions.
 
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I tend to use the vs player report in HEM2 and then sort it by biggest loss and look at the worst 10 hands of the session to see if I played them correctly and if so if there was any way I could have lost less money by playing different on them
 
JuiceClouds

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One thing that i learned early from a coach was when to actually study.
The best time to study is actually BEFORE your next session.

Leaks that you discover from the day before, can be corrected on that days session (in theroy).

If you sincerely want to get better as a player, you have to put in the time to review what needs to be fixed in your game.

There are many free online tools out there and i highly recommend going over hands in either HM or PT4.

I think it also helps if you study with another player, preferably someone better than yourself.
It helps to have another players point of view and having you explain what & why you played certain hands the way you did will be really helpful to your future thought process.

Im actually thinking of putting together a small Skype group of new players who are serious about getting better.

Im not sure too many people would be interested in something like this on this site though...
 
AlfieAA

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One thing that i learned early from a coach was when to actually study.
The best time to study is actually BEFORE your next session.

Leaks that you discover from the day before, can be corrected on that days session (in theroy).

If you sincerely want to get better as a player, you have to put in the time to review what needs to be fixed in your game.

There are many free online tools out there and i highly recommend going over hands in either HM or PT4.

I think it also helps if you study with another player, preferably someone better than yourself.
It helps to have another players point of view and having you explain what & why you played certain hands the way you did will be really helpful to your future thought process.

Im actually thinking of putting together a small Skype group of new players who are serious about getting better.

Im not sure too many people would be interested in something like this on this site though...

i would be interested :)
 
jazzaxe

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I like to examine the big pots that I was in and see if my play was right. A lot of times you are going to lose a bad beat, but your play was right and as long as you continue to bet into these big pots with the goods, you are long term winner.
 
Aces2w1n

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I analyse my hands after every session. Or when I have enough energy to play but not enough time to play.

Big pots winning/losing pots... Did I get the money in good or bad?... Checking what positions I won/lost money.. How did I win it? How did I lose it etc.

I remember certain hands while playing and i'll go back and check it back later or post it on here or another forum.
 
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rrph3rtbkr

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i normally analyse my game after days play, i open all the hands where i lost some chips or could have chipped more ,my main obejective is to learn what mistake am i doing there , am i repeating this mistake every time the same situation arise, have i improve a bit from my last months of play . i would normally put those on forum and ask expert review mostly i ask in pokerstars to thier support group gave me nice advice about the correct play and sometime here also ,got some nice input about the hand .so basically we learn when we share our mistake
 
fletchdad

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@10058765 (what ever happened to your cool snorkeling avatar????:) Nice post. Thanks.

Did anything ever happen with the skype group?

Since I play the bottom of the micros (BRM is key here, I am only rolled for 2-5nl) I dont really have to do a lot of DB analysis. The play is lol so one sided and the players so easy to read. (Not all of them, but if they are not, then they actually are in a way.. if I am making myself clear... ) Having said that, doing any analysis at all is probably NEVER a bad thing.

But hand reading is a skill I need to spend more time improving on, and this works at every level. You either read the hand well or you dont. I forget this a lot,a dn think it is one of the most important aspects of any play at any level.
 
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