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How to get the most out of posting hands on the poker forums

The poker forums can be entertainment or a useful training tool.

 
Posting hand histories on the forums for others to comment has become a standard practice over the years on the poker forums, yet not many players are actually doing it well.  You might ask yourself – what’s there to it? You post a hand, and people tell you how you should have played it, right? 
 
Wrong.
 
When you post a hand, you should not be lazy; meaning you should not just throw out the problem, sit back and watch people bring you solutions on a platter.
 
First of all, the more work you put into the presentation, the more detailed and useful responses you will get. But most importantly, the more detailed you are in your analysis and assessment of your own hand, the more you will have learned from it.
 
Many times the correct or the most reasonable play becomes apparent after you go through all the factors involved, step by step, in detail. 
 
You don’t have to spend hours on one hand (although you could, and the best out there certainly do it).
 
But instead of posting “this guy can have busted draws, I call” – post a more detailed analysis.
 
Which draws exactly? What about his value range? The bet size? His tendencies, your range? And so on…
 
You will take as much from posting a hand as you put into it. 
 
It’s not hard, but it requires the correct mindset and some tips on how to do it.
 

Now that you understand the value of doing it, here are some tips on how to improve your hand posting in practice:

  • Post everything clean and very readable. It shows you respect others’ time
  • Keep things as short and simple as possible, but not shorter/simpler. Get to the point, and cut the BS.
  • Provide important reads that are helpful for the situation
  • Your coach or other posters are NOT your cleaning lady. This means, don’t just throw out a question and wait for a magic answer. The secret to success lies within YOU. This means, do your best, make assumptions about ranges, do calculations (equilab, flopzilla). Your coach is here to give you feedback on your assumptions and NOT to do the math work for you.

 

Here is a step-by-step guide to hand posting:

  • Provide an answer (see the guide in the blue box below on how to provide an answer for your hand)
  • Clean hand history posting. Stop the hand history at the point where you have a question (put in a spoiler, so your coach can always check results)
  • Ask your question
  • Look at results, and let others know what, if anything, would you do differently next time based on what you have learned (put this part into a spoiler so they don’t see the results!)
    • Sometimes we learn nothing because Villain just had AA preflop or was going all-in with the full house on the river
    • Sometimes we learn something that Villain does (he slowplays a set, cold calls with AA pre, floats very light)
    • Sometimes we learn something that Villain does NOT do (he does NOT fast play a set – so when he does raise on the flop, he is more likely to be bluffing; he does NOT reraise AA preflop, so we can assume his 3-bets have more bluffs, and we can 4-bet him lighter; he does NOT fold much on the flop)

 

You will start finding more satisfaction in posting the hands, by going deeper into the situation, and actually learning something from it, as opposed to just copy-pasting the text and coming back the next day to see if everybody else would have done the same as you did.

You will start developing your thought process, and most likely realize how much you actually know already – if you only take the time to think about it for more than 2 seconds!

This could also help your attitude at the tables, especially if you are guilty of insta-clicking or auto-piloting at the tables.  The more you think about the game, the better understanding you will get. 

Don’t rely on others to do the work for you. You might get the results, but not the benefits (or satisfaction!) of doing the work yourself. At BPC, we prefer teaching people how to fish, as opposed to just feeding them fish (pun intended!).

Get your hand posting right, do it regularly and properly, and you will be surprised what a little bit of consistent effort can do for you over the long run.

If you need further clarification on how to analyze your hands, check out the short intro to ranges and combinations below. It will give you the basic idea for how to approach hand analysis.

Good luck at the tables!

 

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