Analysis of Hand Histories

[themflags]

I'm just getting started playing online. How profitable (or necessary) is it to analyze the play of my opponents? I found myself spending 5 hours studying the activity of only one hour of play. Is this efficient use of time?

[deacsoft]

Get pokertracker and let it handle the other players, but to spend hours looking over your own play can be very rewarding.

[pzhon]

If you are playing good players for high stakes, analyze their play offline as much as possible. It will keep you out of the game.

If you are playing bad players for low stakes, just look at what they had after each interesting hand. Recognize that they may be playing terribly, but look anyway. Try to see what they had on each street while you still remember how long it took them to make each decision. If you are only playing one table, you should be able to do this during the next hand.

[timmer]

At first I would say yes.

soon you will just analyze frequent opponents then only those that give you trouble. Once you meet up with a new frequent opponent you can book him too.

Just my few cents

timmer

[Sully]

The fact that you are actually interested enough to spend that kind of time analyzing your play and others is a VERY good sign. As you get better, you will analyze other people less, and you analyze yourself a lot more.

Find a decent system where you can categorize other players into general groups, and spend more time giving detailed analysis to the ones who you see regularly / cause you trouble / feel you can learn from.

As you get better and more confident, your time will start to lean towards more play / less "homework". In the meanwhile, analyze when you feel like analyzing.....play when you feel like playing. No ratio is perfect at this point....USE POKERTRACKER.