A 2+2 Library of Pregnant Poker Hands

[Student]

I've finally found the ideal tool for analyzing a single hand! PokerTracker is it. PT let's me view a single hand over and over again, watching it unfold just as though I was attending a table as an observer, not a player. PT shows the hand, just like online casinos do, with a table and everything. I can step thru the hand action by action, move thru the hand automatically at different paces, and spend time trying to figure out why each player at the table did what they did.

I view finding this capability as one of the major steps the beginner at poker must discover, because analyzing hands can't be done properly by simply watching on TV (though this isn't entirely useless!), or by observing an online poker game. These two activities pale by comparison with using PokerTracker [or any other Historic Hand (HH)display tool] to study a hand, doing it repeatedly until a proper explanation is obtained for what motivated each participant to behave the way they did.

I have a question: Where do I find hands that are suitable to me (beginner status, of course), maximum instructive, maximum interesting, at specified blinds level, and in HH format? My understanding is PT will record Party Poker hands, even those hands I'm not actually participating in (I presently have gone up the limits all the way to 1/2 cents NL HE, from freeplay). This is good, because then I could have PT fetch hands at whatever blinds level I'm interested in! And I could use PT to study these hands, until such time as I thought I understood them.

Here's a problem for me. Since I expect to mature as a player to the point where bonuses and rake recapture are important to me, though I'm far and away from that presently, I don't want to go to Party Poker yet, until I have an affiliate relationship assuring bonuses and rakeback for me. Of course, these are for the indeterminate future, not today! In fact, I don't want to go to any Party skin yet either, since again I don't want to burn bridges today that I might need tomorrow.

I'm wondering if 2+2 has a library of HHs that I can tap. Do you know of one? Where is it? Will PT accept the output from the Bison Hand Converter, as displayed on 2+2 in some of the table forums, and be able to show the table etc? Are there those on 2+2 who are willing to send HHs to others in the form of an attachment to an email message? Can one send HHs as an attachment to a Private Message (PM) here on 2+2?

Ideally a library of HHs would be available here on 2+2, eh?
It would contain important hands from tournaments, hands used in books as illustrations, etc. Of course, proper author recognition would be required. Too, the beginner needs hands appropriate to his situation, just as advanced players need proper hands, hands that are at their own level...

Dave

PS: I should think authors themselves would welcome having "their" hands available in the 2+2 library, because then readers of their book could study illustrative hands, until they actually understood lessons implicit, right? Maybe some authors have already prepared a library of their own hands. If so, would you kindly put them into your website for downloading? I would be one of those who would vastly appreciate that!!!

[AKQJ10]

Sounds like possibly a good application of the wiki, although I confess I don't see where storing the actual hands adds much more value than storing a bunch of links to 2+2 threads with hands.

For a tiny example see the thread linked at http://poker.wikicities.com/wiki/LHE:Preflop:TT -- just one of mine, but i'd love to see dozens.

[Student]

OK, here's the difference, and why my idea is such a strong one!

Let's say a book contains an example involving TT. In addition to discussing the theory of what you're up against when you face TT, the book illustrates with a single sample hand. The author describes all of those who entered the hand, including size of their bankroll. He goes on to describe the kind of player each of the participants is. Then he lays out betting action preflop, including who bet what, who called, who folded, raises, reraises, etc. He attempts to lay out why each player did what they did, and speculates about what kind of hand they probably have. Good enough! The flop happens, and the routine continues all the way to showdown. More analysis happens.

Now that seems like alot of information about just one playing of TT! But more information is available, and that's what happens when everything is added to make this a Historic Hand (HH). If the reader of the book could then take HH info and actually run and rerun the hand, and read and reread the section of the book covering this hand, the reader could then internalize VERY MUCH, taking it way far beyond where the author was forced to end off, given the limitations of the printed page, compared to the scope and magnitude of the problem.

But that same could be said about every hand posted to 2+2. What does one obtain from these postings? A streamlined and very useful display of pertinent factors in a hand, such as your TT, is what! Could the HH for this posted hand help? Of course! It would be of immense help!

Wiki could really do this! Hands could be placed on a 0 to 10 scale, with 10 being the most expert of them. By handing the HH to the user Wiki would be handing them the Bison Converter format hand too! Expert commentary would accompany, so the user would have a mark to shoot at. Let's face it, at first the user is going to come up with a great big dahhhhhhh.... And why not? Beginner's are worrying about a million complexities, and the lesson the author may be trying to get across is far from where they are. And with what result? Learning suffers. The author fails to teach, the pupil fails to learn, the recommendation to read the book isn't made, and life goes on...

Dave

[mattw]

to answer your original question, i dont think 2+2 has a "library" of hands stored in one place. after you have played enough hands (100k) you should have every concievable(sp?) possibility stored with PT.

one thing that came to mind as i read your post is that party appears to be doing away with rakeback. i think most of the skins are stilling doing it though. get rakeback from every site that you can. see rakerebatereview.com or the classified add's here. also, see bonuswhores.com for bonus info. no, im not an affiliate of either, i just dont want to see a new guy make the same mistakes as i did.

gl

[Student]

Thanks for your help!

I play 1/2 cents NL HE on PokerStars, and I lose money at it. There will be a time when I make money at this game, and another when I can breakeven at $1/2 or $3/6 or something else, at which time I'll wonder about bonuses and rakeback. Then I'll make my move, so to speak! I'm staying away from Party deliberately, so I can join them and their skins in the optimum way.

Let's say I was ready to make my move. My understanding is you have to join the skins first, and then join Party itself lastly. This gives you the biggest set of opportunities to secure good bonuses. Is this your advise too?

A problem with studying Historic Hands you've played personally, especially when the only playing you've done is on the 1/2 cents tables, is that these hands will be typical of beginner play, hence scarcely a model of excellence! You're absolutely correct that hands in my personal library would include some ideal ones, perhaps even many ideal ones, but I'm too inexperienced to make the judgement. The ideal hand has every participant playing flawlessly (except as noted below), because I recommend that seeing a hand unfold, action by action, will draw attention to every decision made, for the extreme benefit of the beginner.

Ideally a person, beginner or advanced player, would submit hands he thinks are great hands for possible inclusion in the 2+2 library of great hands. An expert would review submitted hands, and would accept hands in behalf of 2+2 users, affixing to accepted hands notes of explanation. The user would learn what he can from these hands, the notes, and also his personal library of poker reference books. He'd test statements to his own satisfaction, and learn accordingly.

So it's true each of us could come up with 100 hands per day we've played personally (and many, many more if using Party, most of which we'd not be part of), but the process of sorting thru these hands to provide the optimum eventual learning experience necessitates having an expert involved at some level. Wiki would have a certain facility, in these respects, and they'd take hands they accept into their library of Historic Hands and offer them to the public. They would simultaneously urge expert players to critique these hands. After all, a hand doesn't have to be ideally correct to be an excellent learning hand; it could be an super example of a certain common leakage! What makes it a learning experience is the words that attend it, which turn it from a bunch of random actions into a reasoned display suitable for best learning.

Dave

[DrunkHamster]

I know its not exactly what you are looking for, but its kinda similar so I thought it would be worth a link.

http://www.tightpoker.com/poker_lessons.html

There are a load of hands (mostly tourney, but a few ring) where the guy who runs the site goes through his thought processes. I found it really helpful when I started out.

[AKQJ10]

Why don't you post one or two hands that you found instructive on the wiki (make up whatever name you think appropriate -- I'd suggest starting with "NLHE:"), link them here, and I promise I'll edit them to add some commentary. Then if someone wants to correct my comments, they can do so, etc.

Basically like a hand thread on the forums -- except you never have to bump it to the top. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Student]

Thanks for the linkage!

I've gone there and got mixed up with the hand replayer described there. Too late I noticed the edition they plan for July release (hence not released to date) includes PokerStars hands in their scope.

I also noticed he presents many historic hands he was involved in, and this offers to me (provided I can use these hands in PokerTracker) hands played at much higher limits than I expect to see in the near future. Perhaps that will give me exposure to a higher level of play than 1/2 cents NL HE on PS offers! After thinking about it some, I realize that even imperfect hands, played poorly, offer learning possibilities. The books tell where we can go wrong, and then the example hands illustrate folks playing poorly and the consequences thereby.

Thanks so much! I expect to learn much from this newly available direction...

Dave

[Student]

I definitely want to take you up on your offer! Unfortunately you haven't supported overtly the idea of placing raw HH data directly at the disposal of your wiki readers. With this data they could choose to either study the hand using the Bison Hand Converter, and displaying Bison output here in 2+2, or could see the hand unfold in the "replay" mode using PokerTracker or some other hand replayer. Notice another fellow in this thread indirectly brings to our attention another hand replayer presently limited to Party Poker and skins, but developers are working feverishly to adapt it to PokerStars. This hand replayer is totally self-standing, not making an effort to also bring all the statistical treasures PT does. BUT. It demonstrates that hand replaying, similar to the way internet casinos present tables to players, is an interesting prospect to enhance clarity of understanding, so necessary for we beginners.

I envision not only authors presenting their practice hands in HH format, and making these hands available on their own websites, but also internet casinos making actual played hands available to all. They would convert to hide dates and times, player names, etc. They could draw from play done a year before, offering 200 consecutive hands played at a particular table, and identities etc would be protected. These special HH would let me, a raw beginner, actually track play at $10/20 tables. I could watch play unfold at my pace, and could review the same hand a dozen times or more, until I felt I understood which underlying theories were of dominating importance (not be to confused with dominating poker hands!).

I think I understand what you're getting at, concerning adding commentary to hands. When originally placed on wiki these hands could have outright erroneous interpretations, and yet these errors would be corrected as they were discovered. This discovery process would permit many viewers to critique what was said, and the eventual result would be a very educational hand!

Dave

PS: How would your commentary be added to the HH data?

[AASooted]

[ QUOTE ]
I think I understand what you're getting at, concerning adding commentary to hands. When originally placed on wiki these hands could have outright erroneous interpretations, and yet these errors would be corrected as they were discovered. This discovery process would permit many viewers to critique what was said, and the eventual result would be a very educational hand!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is exactly what happens all over the 2+2 forums currently, and I think it's probably more useful to post hands and comment on them directly on the forums.

On the forums, you can submit a hand that you feel you misplayed and have more experience players point out to you where you went wrong. You wouldn't get that from a library of "expert" hands.

Also, there are so many variables involved in a hand of poker that it would be impossible to cover how to play TT in every situation. Are you in early or late position? Was the pot raised before you? Is it likely to be raised after you if you limp in? What is the board like on the flop? The turn? The river? Are there overcards? Possible straights or flushes? How many players saw the flop? What do your opponents have? Who is betting or raising? How do your opponents play? The back and forth of the forums allows people to point out to me the things I should be thinking about to help me master the concepts I need to apply in unfamiliar situations.

Good luck to you on your quest, but I think what you're looking for is already all around you on the different forums. There are three different limit forums, two no-limit and one for Heads-Up & Short-Handed that are filled with posted hands and people discussing the best way to play them. That's much more information than I can absorb in a day already.

[AKQJ10]

Student wrote,

[ QUOTE ]
Unfortunately you haven't supported overtly the idea of placing raw HH data directly at the disposal of your wiki readers.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand what you're asking for here. First of all, the idea of any wiki is that it should require my overt support, or anyone else's, because you can go in and edit freely to your heart's content. In practice I recognize that in practice there are technical and cultural barriers to entry, but I want to help make them as low as possible. Wiki software keeps a history of everything, so a new user CAN'T irrevocably screw it up, even by deleting content! I'd be happy to help you put what you want up on PokerWiki, but I don't entirely understand what you're looking for.

[ QUOTE ]
When originally placed on wiki these hands could have outright erroneous interpretations, and yet these errors would be corrected as they were discovered. This discovery process would permit many viewers to critique what was said, and the eventual result would be a very educational hand!

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly! Wikis are very much oriented toward open-source values of peer review and constant incremental improvement.

[ QUOTE ]
PS: How would your commentary be added to the HH data?

[/ QUOTE ]

Plain text formatted in paragraphs, but I'm not sure that answers your question. I don't understand what you're asking.

AASooted opined,

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is exactly what happens all over the 2+2 forums currently, and I think it's probably more useful to post hands and comment on them directly on the forums.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 100%. I want to clarify that I'm suggesting the wiki because (to the extent I understand Dave's suggestion) it might be a good format for what Dave's trying to do. But I don't have an opinion on whether it's worth doing, because I don't really yet understand how it would differ from present discussion.

[ QUOTE ]
On the forums, you can submit a hand that you feel you misplayed and have more experience players point out to you where you went wrong. You wouldn't get that from a library of "expert" hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree -- provided that you have a community of experienced players contributing to such a library. But building up a community like that takes time, and it already exists at 2+2. Ideally maybe the same people would get involved (much as has happened somewhat with the wiki), but you'd have to convince them that this new project adds value above what you already get from the message forums.



[ QUOTE ]
Also, there are so many variables involved in a hand of poker that it would be impossible to cover how to play TT in every situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely, but I don't think "cover[ing] how to play TT in every situation" is a reasonable goal -- either for Dave's project or for PokerWiki. My goal in developing pages such as the one linked above is to give the beginner some pointers and refer to other resources that might be helpful. Among those resources are interesting threads from 2+2, RPG, various print sources, and hopefully will be many I wouldn't have thought of! I don't fully understand if this is Dave's goal yet.

[AASooted]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
On the forums, you can submit a hand that you feel you misplayed and have more experience players point out to you where you went wrong. You wouldn't get that from a library of "expert" hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree -- provided that you have a community of experienced players contributing to such a library. But building up a community like that takes time, and it already exists at 2+2. Ideally maybe the same people would get involved (much as has happened somewhat with the wiki), but you'd have to convince them that this new project adds value above what you already get from the message forums.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess I'm pessimistic that enough people could be drawn to comment on a large number of hands on the wiki. I've seen a few posts in Micro-Limit in which posters said they couldn't keep up with all the hands there. I know I can't. I could be wrong about the level of participation. I've been wrong before.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Also, there are so many variables involved in a hand of poker that it would be impossible to cover how to play TT in every situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely, but I don't think "cover[ing] how to play TT in every situation" is a reasonable goal -- either for Dave's project or for PokerWiki.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess I got stuck on his comment about the "ideal hand" in which everyone played perfectly. My point is that the perfect line in one situtation won't be right in another. Like you, I'm a little lost as to what he's really try to accomplish, though.

[ QUOTE ]
My goal in developing pages such as the one linked above is to give the beginner some pointers and refer to other resources that might be helpful. Among those resources are interesting threads from 2+2, RPG, various print sources, and hopefully will be many I wouldn't have thought of!

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't taken the time to look at the wiki as closely as I'd like, but I definitely appreciate the time and effort you (and everyone else) have taken to do it.

[Student]

Thanks for your patience and excellent inputs!

This morning I've been reluctant to answer either you or AKQJ10, since the ideas we're dealing with have such importance. Handled properly 2+2 and wiki will thrive, and beginners will be introduced into profitable poker all the sooner. As a beginner this last part seems attractive to me, but if every player were expert profits would be sparing for everyone! Even at that, I proceed as though this wasn't and shouldn't be a concern. I suspect many others have wondered if their contribution might not be the very thing that destroys poker, since it levels the playing field so thoroughly, and yet it has never happened!

As a beginner I view poker very differently than experienced and good players do. In each new field I've entered I've noticed that interdisciplinary contributions were easy for me to make, and powerful beyond what was to be expected! So it's the case that I'll probably come up with some novel and useful solutions to help poker, even long before I learn how to breakeven playing 1/2 cents NL HE poker, on PokerStars. Why? Because my inquiring mind isn't shackled by preconceptions about how things are supposed to be; I'm free to be creative, at least for now!

Notice players will document to 2+2 they've read certain poker books 2, 3, and even as much as 10 times over. They've probably read and reread sections of some of these books 2 dozen times. What draws players to such behavior? Well, they're not getting what they need, in terms of understanding, from watching play on TV and B&Ms, or playing, no matter where. Why?

An important variable, relating to poker understanding, is time. 25 or more decisions are made in the course of a single hand, and as many as 100. This unfolds in as little as one minute for the entire hand. My guess is decisions are coming at the rate of about 0.7 decisions per second (1.5 seconds per decision). That's fast, real fast!

How long did it require me to study the matter of one hand dominating another? Many hours, and I'm not done yet. Cold-calling preflop raises is a factor in this, and so is the important statistic PFR. Why does it take me so long? It's because I'm trying to reach to logical inferences possible, given this new awareness of this facet of poker playing. I want to know how my play should be altered, now that I know about this situation! And it takes time, lots of time.

Here's another time dynamic. Hand replayers are being developed. In this very thread there is reference to a Replayer that takes HH (Historic Hands) and displays them to the screen in exactly the same way internet casinos display hands, as they're being played originally. This Replayer is in process of being built. The Replayer takes HH raw data and displays the hand to the screen. HH is in the form of text, which is about as primitive a format as happens these days, between civilized humans (the less civilized deal in machine language, C, and C++). It's just letters, symbols and numbers.

Why is this explanation important? Because HHs can be modified to remove innane comments players make in the notes section during course of the original game, and add comments that assist viewers of the hand in Replayers, to learn about decisions made during the course of the hand. Naturally, if the Replayer ignors comments, then it must be rewritten so comments are optionably available (he said pompously, as though it would be possible to do this in the snapping of a finger!). So the hand says SmallBlind (a player situated in the SB) bets 1 cent, and BigBlind (BB) bets 2 cents. It then says UTG1 bets 4 cents, and provided comments were enabled, it then says "Preflop Raise: see TOP pp 23, 57-9, 127 and SSHE pp 57, 59, 62-4, 100, 239." PLEASE realize these are entirely fictitious references, as I've checked both books and couldn't find in the index "Preflop Raise." Then the Replayer goes to the next action etc etc.

HHs can be taken into word processors, so original names of players can be replaced by positional names (rather than Hero, Villain etc). Dates and times can be changed, too. Now let's be honest about this; PS by itself must run 3 million hands per day. There are plenty of hands available. There will come a day when internet casinos no longer make hands available, even to those who've played the hand, but they will release packages of hands to the public so players can better learn how to play poker, using Replayers. I hope I'm wrong...

The Replayers are in a dynamism of their very own; they are changing to adapt to full expectations possible. Bison provides an extremely useful static display of a hand; Replayers a dynamic one. Both require hands in raw form, HHs. Replayers thrive on properly annotated hands, so viewers can learn everything that a hand can teach.

An author should take a hand that he's described in a full page of his hard-copy book and suppliment it with a Replayer version. In his version the note he'd write to rationize as to what the player was doing, would use his own words, being an extention of his very own book, actually.

It's true there are an infinity of possibilities with hands, and your illustrations involving TT hole cards are excellent, but there are a reasonably small universe of actions to take at each stage of betting within a poker hand, and that's what beginners are having such difficulty incorporating into their play.

Wiki could take 100 hands, any 100 hands, drawn from 1/2 cents play at a NL HE table, and just place it into a suitably labeled subdirectory of their website. Thus, a user who just wanted some hands others have played would hit the button for "NL HE 1/2 Cents Blinds," and they could cut and paste any or all of these 100 hands into their own hands Replayer. Wiki could just keep adding batches of hands, and immediate benefit would occur, even without annotating. Gee, hundreds of groups of hands could be on Wiki in a few days, given size of the technical problems to be faced...

Of course, I'm always the optimist! Have fun with your poker!!!

Dave

PS: I've reread your post, and I admit the above doesn't encompass my dream for what is possible. As we explore, new ideas will pop up, and that's what the 2+2 threads are all about! Thanks for your inputs, and keep them coming...

[afk]

[ QUOTE ]
I play 1/2 cents NL HE on PokerStars, and I lose money at it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Student,

Every time I see you post I have a bunch of thoughts that run through my head, so I'm just going to write them down right here for ya. I don't play No Limit poker so I can't specifically help you on your game, but I can point you in the right direction. Don't take my remarks as me being rude, just realize that I'm trying to help a beginner.

I'm astounded at how much thought and work you put in to poker. It's great. But I think you put it in all the wrong places. You shouldn't be losing money at 1/2 cent NL Hold 'Em (yes maybe it's variance, of course). I took a brief look through your previous posts and aside from some posts in STT and some other forums ALL of your posts are in the beginner forum - and I didn't even find one hand you posted where you needed help. I didn't even find one reply to a hand giving advice or asking why a certain play was made.

Listen.

This is hurting your growth as a player.

I feel you are too busy micro-managing your game. You need to just play. Get the experience. When you come to a point in a hand where you think "Now what the hell do I do now?" write the hand number down, look at the hand history later and post it in the appropriate forum with questions about your play ( from what I've gathered Small Stakes No Limit/Pot Limit Hold'em would be your appropriate forum).

You need to jump in to the strategy forums and start commenting on hands. The beginner forum is helpful (and there are A LOT of helpful people here, Sheridan Cat to name just one) but I can't help but think that you're wasting your time - again, putting your effort in the wrong places.

You need the practical experience of reviewing hands and getting help with troubling hands...badly. I guarantee your skill level will increase by leaps and bounds if you start posting hands, replying to hands and most importantly - following the advice properly. It will take a little while to discern who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't but that's all part of the experience. Posting a hand and getting lynched by every poster in the thread for a dumb play you made is a good thing - you won't make that mistake again. That equals profit in the long run. And do yourself a favour when you start posting hands - please be as clear, concise and quick as possible - if your hand posts are drawn out and unnecessarily long I'm willing to bet that the number and quality of replies you get will suffer.

Ok I'm kinda just rambling and saying the same thing over and over again so I'll stop. It's just my opinion, but I think if you take my advice it will help.

[mattw]

student, i agree with afk. he hit it on the head. i was impressed by the length and depth of your post here. you definately put alot of thought and time into it. try following afk's advise for a period of time and see how it goes. not beating .01/.02 NL sounds like me when i was startng out. also, how much thinking do you think goes on at those micro-level. you are probably thinking for the whole table /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Student]

Thanks for your interest in my progress!

There are many topics a beginner, aspiring to be a tournament NL HE player, is faced with. Permit me to speak to the topic of hand analysis.

My awakening as to my limitations in hand analysis area happened quite some time ago. I learned to post hands to 2+2 using Bison. But then I realized I needed a mechanism to discover the most deserving hands for analysis. It would have been nice if Historic Hands, which I've been storing since April, would show net loss or gain from each hand, but they don't. They don't even specify how much money you've spent on a hand. Consequently it takes lots of time to discover important hands, hands worthy of analysis. After all, these are hands most influencing our fortunes!

But I knew that many were using PokerTracker, and the PT description of their software demonstrated to me that taking all hands I'd played in a day and sorting them by win/loss amounts would accomplish what I wanted, in terms of best 10 hands and worst 10 hands. Now I have that capability, so the problem of discovery is solved for me, for all time. BUT, it required my time invested. During all this time I continue to operate at a net loss in my play with 1/2 cents poker. Coming to grips with PT in itself requires time.

An essential for me, during all of this, is that I share my discoveries with others, as I discover them. Because of this, sometimes I blunder onto an avenue others hadn't thought of, and most often I simply reinvent the wheel. But that's the nature of my thought process, and it's how I have fun with what I do. I think of this avenue I've presented as being:

1. Using hand Replayers

2. Having a library of hands, one for each of a hundred or more categories of poker, is possible using Wiki (AKQJ10's creation)

3. Bringing in authors at all levels, so they will also provide annotated HH data for hands they use to illustrate their points

4. Encourage Replayer software developers to include provision for educational remarks, so HHs can be transformed into powerful teaching/learning tools.

It's my way of saying Thank You to 2+2, to AKQJ10, and to you and others who are helping me.

Has my hand analysis direction been lost in the process? Partially. Has the pace of playing poker slowed? Yes. Is all of this strictly necessary? No. Left to do it over again, would I do it differently? No. Why? It's the most fun, and it's also potentially the most useful in the long run. Making profits on 1/2 cents NL HE is a results-oriented thing. Learning to work with poker in a more meaningful way, and helping others with the same, is more important and useful in the long run.

I wish I had time to simply keep up with this thread, but there just isn't time enough in a day to do everything.

Dave

[Student]

Please notice from date and time of this post that I'm answering completely out of order. I'll presume the reader of this post of mine will have read my others first.

My personal purposes would be accomplished beautifully if I'd simply sign up with Party Poker, and then use PokerTracker to export hands that I'm viewing as an observer. My understanding is I could sign up on Party Poker from a totally separate computer, using a totally different alias and email address, and then I'd have kept my options open for Party Poker bonuses and rakeback at some later date.

Another way of getting hands for $1/2 or $5/10 NL HE ring games would be to simply request that someone send theirs as an attachment to an email, working with 2+2 Private Messages services. I don't need a million hands and I don't need perfect hands. Just hands. I can do the work of figuring out which hands have lessons to teach.

I can't just throw a bunch of money at the problem. I need to work my way up the limits, and since I'm still unprofitable at 1/2 cents, it would seem it will take a long time to get these $5/10 NL HE historic hands.

What is the best possible teaching tool for poker? A qualified consultant giving personal tutoring at a cost of $1,000/hr. Are books a reasonable alternative? Well, a book must be written like a traditional book: introduction, table of contents, chapters, stories, illustrations, tables, index etc. It must flow, be fun to read, and be educational. That books fail to teach poker well is illustrated by the fact most readers must reread them repeatedly, to finally accept the lessons.

Well then, how about playing poker, so as to learn? Play is so rapid that lessons can scarcely be learned. Then too, at first one plays only against fellow beginners, or folks who through long years of experience have perfected incompetence at poker play. What kind of lessons are possible in this environment?

PokerTracker permits viewing hundreds of hands, using filters to discover hands that potentially have the finest teaching potential. Then, wonder of wonders, PT has within it a Replayer, so one can slow play of the hand to a snails pace, all the while seeing the hand unfold as though it was at the internet casino! The viewer can attempt to fanthom every action of every player, using his library of poker books as reference, and bring everything together into an excellent learning experience! All of this capability is part of the here and now. Anyone can do it today.

I'm proposing some changes so that thousands of contributors to 2+2 could each bring an occasional HH to the attention of everyone. Replayer changes, Wiki adaptations, recruiting helpers etc. Each properly annotated HH would be a rich learning experience, one even better than the hand well-analyzed in a book. In fact, I recommend authors consider having on their website every hand they have in their book, so the learning experience can be complete for their loyal readers.

Hope this pulls my ideas together better, and thanks again for your tremendous contributions!

Dave