How to analyze your own play

[Jonathan]

Hi,

People here post hands seeking comments and advice from others, in an attempt to analyze and improve their own play. I think its a supportive environment and a great way to improve. But I'm not sure that its practical to post every single hand where you may have some doubts about your play.

I wonder how people go about analyzing their own play?

In my case, for example, after every sit and go, I review every game record the next day (after some time away from the action in question) to see if I would still play the hand the same way. I sometimes find some incredible blunders and I find myself asking "Did I really raise with that piece of garbage"? Or, "How could I possibly call his all-in bet with that"?

What I would like is to keep a type of notebook or file on my pc with a copy of the hands and my comments, perhaps sorted by theme. What tools do other people use to keep track of their previous errors and comments? Is there some feature of PokerTracker that lends itself to this? Or is it better to just run the hand in question through bisonbisons hand converter and save the output in a Word file?

Thanks for the input.

Jonathan

[La Brujita]

I watch a lot of my games through the Party replayer.

I also calculate odds on all important hands to try and see if I made the correct play.

[PrayingMantis]

I usually print out the most critical and important hands from the hand history, sit on a couch, drink my cofee, and think about it a lot.

[daveymck]

Purchase Poker Tracker, does everything you want, the handreplayer on there also shows you percentage of time you win with the hands at each stage of the flop also you can make notes on a hand or a tourney and on your opponants.

You can also export the notes into Stars or party so they are there at the table.

All this and loads of other features and records I havent really even screatched the surface.

It is the must have tool as far as I am concerned, download the free demo and take a look at it and I am sure you will be another convert.

[Jonathan]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have pokertracker, and agree that it is an invaluable tool, but don't see exactly how it addresses the question I raised. For example, the hand replay feature requires you to enter a specific hand number. Where would you have notes on the hands of interest and the theme it addresses? Also, is there a place within the hand replayer that allows me to make notes on each stage of the play?

I'll have to look into this more closely and see if pokertracker would fill this need.

Thanks

Jonathan

[daveymck]

sorry I misunderstood.

This may be wrong but I think PokerTracker can be exported or the database used with Microsoft Access, you could then develop queries on the Notes fields and then make you notes with a theme header or somthing.

I think some people had set somthing similar up so they could export player notes based on the stats before the feature was added.

Might be worth posting this on a more mainstream forum eg General holdem or the Books/Software forum. There might be somthing on the forum on the Poker Tracker site.

[Ghazban]

I'm fairly new to this forum and I, too, have been wondering what kinds of things people do to analyze and improve their play. One thing that looking at hand replays won't do is remind you of any psychological aspects of what was happening in that hand. If you just KNEW the guy was bluffing, you'd call with less than if you thought he had the nuts, for example, so don't forget that aspect of the game. I play at Foxwoods from time to time and the 1.5-hour drive home is usually good for me to try and analyze my time there, regardless of if I came out ahead or behind. I'm more irritated by playing poorly and winning than by playing well and losing (which is probably a good thing in the long run) and I am usually able to recall the key moments from the session there that cost/gained me a lot of chips.

Any suggestions for analyzing offline play? It'd be great if I could get someone who knows about poker to come with me and just watch me and give feedback but that just isn't going to happen.

[Jonathan]

Dave,

I went back to take a look at the Pokertracker hand replay feature, and see that it does allow me to enter notes on each game. Then in the hands table, I can scan for those hands where I made notes and go back and replay these hands of interest.

I don't see how to categorize them, short of your suggestion of exporting them to an Access database, but I think its very useful as is.

Thanks for you suggestion.

Regards,
Jonathan