Poker is a game of strategy as much as luck. Study and preparation can work wonders for your gameplay, making it crucial to look back on your previous games, point out any mistakes and work through kinks in your tactics or approach.
One of the best ways to improve quickly is to dissect your poker hand history, unlocking hidden insights as you sharpen your decision-making skills through examination. Poker hand analysis reveals the underlying dynamics of your moves, allowing you to understand the strengths, weaknesses and mistakes in your gameplay. Whether you’re an online poker beginner or a seasoned expert with proven poker skills, fine-tuning your strategy allows you to gain a competitive edge at the poker table.Â
In order for it to work in your favor, you have to be meticulous in your analysis, use all the tools available to you and be honest with yourself regarding weaker aspects of your play style. By dissecting your past hands, you can identify leaks in your strategy, spot patterns in your opponents’ behavior and make data-driven adjustments to improve your overall game.
Where To Begin
If you want to record your poker hands accurately, there are three ways to do so; hand histories in-game, hand-tracking software and good old pen and paper. Tracking everything yourself takes more work and you’re missing out on the advantages of modern technology, so it’s best to become familiar with the perks of tech-assisted analysis sooner rather than later.
There are also various tools available for effective hand analysis, from equity calculators to hand converters and solvers. These tools will help you grasp the fundamentals of hand equities, ranges and optimal plays. By bringing these resources into your analysis process, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions at the poker table.
Tools for Success
Most online poker platforms provide hand history functionality, allowing you to save and review previous hands. Ensure this feature is enabled when you play online and learn how to access and export your hand histories. This is particularly useful if you play poker tournaments regularly, seeing as a hand-by-hand breakdown of performance is priceless to pro players.
Hand-tracking software such as PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager are excellent tools for analysis, especially when they’re combined with hand history. Equity calculators, such as Flopzilla or Equilab, help you evaluate hand equities and ranges using a poker hands chart. Use these tools to assess the profitability of your decisions and explore different strategies that might be more effective than your current methods.
Advanced players can also employ solvers and range analyzers, like PIO Solver or GTO Range Builder, to explore game theory optimal (GTO) strategies. These tools provide in-depth analysis of hand ranges and suggest optimal plays in online poker. With all of these forms of analysis in your learning arsenal, you have access to a treasure trove of information that clues you into every facet of your game.
Running the Numbers
Now that we have the tools we need for accurate analysis, the only thing left to do is to ensure that the process for study is executed correctly. In terms of what you should be looking out for, try to focus on lost hands more than winning ones. The reasoning behind this is that correcting your mistakes is more important than figuring out your strengths, as the latter tends to occur naturally over time.
Starting hands dictate the flow of every game, so it’s advised to begin with an analysis of your preflop decisions. Evaluate your hand selections, positions you play from and the actions that led to your decisions. Consider alternative plays and assess whether your choices were optimal. If you can’t justify a move you made with a logical reason for doing so, you’ve found a potential area of weakness that needs improvement.
Break down these inefficient hands street by street, analyzing your moves, your opponents’ moves and the series of plays that led up to that point. Evaluate your betting, calling and raising decisions, focusing on the reasoning behind each move and whether or not expected outcomes were achieved.
Once you’ve identified mistakes or suboptimal decisions, the final step is to work on avoiding them in the future. If you’ve reviewed your plays correctly, you should have a clear plan of action moving forward, whether it’s improvement with bluffing, calling less often or betting more aggressively.Â
Through proficient poker hand analysis and accurate tracking, you won’t just gain insight into your own performance. As an added benefit, you also gain valuable information about your opponents’ tendencies, playing styles and range of hands, enabling you to exploit their weaknesses and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Work and Play With BetMGM Online Casino
If you want to study your poker plays and have fun while you’re at it, register with BetMGM Online Casino and begin your quest for perfected plays today. Membership grants you exclusive access to an extensive selection of the best online poker games, with live dealers to up the excitement factor, a variety of stakes to choose from and all the tracking you need to take your poker skills to the next level.
