Buying Hand Histories - Can It Improve Your Poker Game?
When a round is played at a poker room, the poker client will save a history of the hand with the players and their actions. At many poker rooms you can get those hand histories saved locally on your own computer. You can then look at all the hands that you have played. But it can be tough to find the exact hand replay as the files are not that easy to navigate and search through. It is here Poker Tracking programs are useful as they can show you the hand replays in an informative way.
The histories are used in many poker programs. Poker HUDs use it to gather information, poker tracking programs use it and even some table selection programs use it. As you can see it is used by many programs.
Why is it good with more histories?
The hands can be used to collect information about opponents you have not played against before. When you are using a Poker HUD it will gather information while you are at the table and the more hands you play at the table the more information about them you will have. Sample size is very important when using statistics from a poker HUD. The good thing about purchasing hand replays is that you will have plenty of data about the opponents even before you start playing at a table.
What programs can I use the hand histories with?
The hands can be imported into all the well known tracking/HUD software such as Poker Office, Hold 'em Manager and Poker Tracker. It is quite easy to import the hands into the programs and it does not take long time.
Why not just data mine the hands yourself?
This can be an option, but right now hand histories are so cheap that you are better off just purchasing the hands rather than gathering them yourself. Some of the cheapest hand histories are around 200.000 for $10. And you can buy the histories for a specific blind-level and game so all the hands are relevant.
Is is accepted at the poker sites?
At some poker rooms sharing hand histories are not accepted. But the poker rooms do not have a way of tracking the hand histories so it should be rather safe to buy hands at the established sites. It should also be less dangerous than using data mining programs to gather information.
Is it worth spending money on?
Better stats on your opponents absolutely helps when playing online poker, and as the hand histories are so cheap it does not even have to help that much before it is a profitable purchase. It often depends on how much you use your poker HUD and how many regular players you are playing against. For most decent winning poker players it is a good recommendation to check out some sites selling hand histories.
When a round is played at a poker room, the poker client will save a history of the hand with the players and their actions. At many poker rooms you can get those hand histories saved locally on your own computer. You can then look at all the hands that you have played. But it can be tough to find the exact hand replay as the files are not that easy to navigate and search through. It is here Poker Tracking programs are useful as they can show you the hand replays in an informative way.
The histories are used in many poker programs. Poker HUDs use it to gather information, poker tracking programs use it and even some table selection programs use it. As you can see it is used by many programs.
Why is it good with more histories?
The hands can be used to collect information about opponents you have not played against before. When you are using a Poker HUD it will gather information while you are at the table and the more hands you play at the table the more information about them you will have. Sample size is very important when using statistics from a poker HUD. The good thing about purchasing hand replays is that you will have plenty of data about the opponents even before you start playing at a table.
What programs can I use the hand histories with?
The hands can be imported into all the well known tracking/HUD software such as Poker Office, Hold 'em Manager and Poker Tracker. It is quite easy to import the hands into the programs and it does not take long time.
Why not just data mine the hands yourself?
This can be an option, but right now hand histories are so cheap that you are better off just purchasing the hands rather than gathering them yourself. Some of the cheapest hand histories are around 200.000 for $10. And you can buy the histories for a specific blind-level and game so all the hands are relevant.
Is is accepted at the poker sites?
At some poker rooms sharing hand histories are not accepted. But the poker rooms do not have a way of tracking the hand histories so it should be rather safe to buy hands at the established sites. It should also be less dangerous than using data mining programs to gather information.
Is it worth spending money on?
Better stats on your opponents absolutely helps when playing online poker, and as the hand histories are so cheap it does not even have to help that much before it is a profitable purchase. It often depends on how much you use your poker HUD and how many regular players you are playing against. For most decent winning poker players it is a good recommendation to check out some sites selling hand histories.
