How to Post a Cash Game Poker Hand for Analysis

Tammy · Nov 16, 2022

Poker hand analysis is an important tool to use to improve your game and sharpen your poker strategy. By seeking advice from other poker players, you can gain insight on mistakes you may be making, areas to capitalize on, and different perspectives of the hand that you may not have considered before. Using CardsChat's Hand Analysis sections for both cash games and tournaments is a great way to sharpen your poker knowledge and skills.

Here, I will show you how to post a hand for review in our Cash Game Hand Analysis section.

Use the CardsChat Hand Converter and Replayer to convert your hand history into a more clear, readable format.
Uncoverted hand histories are much more difficult to read than converted hand histories. Make sure to tick "Hide Results" to leave out the outcome of the hand.

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Follow these instructions to post your hand:

From the Cash Game Hand Analysis section, click "NEW HAND"

From here, fill out the fields with your info:

Thread title: DO NOT enter your stakes and game type here. That will all go in the title automatically, based off of the info you put in the other fields. Instead, you can add some other description that is relevant to the hand, i.e.: "8/9 Suited on the Button vs. Early Raise"
Use the dropdown arrows to select the correct information for your hand.

Required Fields:

Game
Game Format
Stakes
Table Format: Full (8-10 seats), 6-max (6 seats), Heads-Up (2 seats)
Currency

You must fill in these fields, or you will get an error when you try to submit your hand.

Poker Tracker/HEM Villain Stats (Optional):
If you use a HUD or other hand tracking software, you can also input data for these options:

VP$IP (Voluntary $ Put in Pot percentage)
PFR (Preflop Raise)
AF (Aggression Factor

Discussion/Poll
In most cases you would make sure to have the Discussion tab clicked here. But you can add a poll to your hand if you wish.

The Discussion field is where you will add your hand history, and then any thoughts about the hand, including reads on your opponents, and other important info. For best results, leave the outcome of the hand out of your post.

Click "POST THREAD" when you are ready to submit your hand!

Read through the next post for some helpful tips for posting hands for analysis.

Tammy · Nov 16, 2022

Follow these guidelines and etiquette to get the most out of the Hand Analysis sections:

1. Provide a descriptive title. For members of the forum, it's a lot easier to decide whether to read a thread if it's obvious what the thread is about.

Here are some descriptive titles:

"KQ hits 2pr on turn, villain shoves. My move?"
"QQ vs preflop reraise"
"Second nut low, nut flush draw vs crazy 3way flop action"
"Fold AA on this coordinated board?"

Here are some bad thread title examples:

"OMG what a donk"
"Should I have folded here?"
"Was this play okay?"

2. There are some simple fields in the form that you need to enter that indicate what the game format is. These are automatically set up as a prefix to your thread title. For example: i.e., "$25NL HE Full Ring"; what you put in the Title field will show after these preset terms, so there's no need to add the game format to your title.

3. Use our hand converter. Unconverted hand histories are much more difficult to read than converted hand histories. In addition, unconverted hands imply but don't state what the pot size is on each street - hand converters automatically display that important piece of information. Plus ours has a cool replayer feature.

4. Provide any available information about table dynamics and villain tendencies in the opening post. These things are as important as your cards to good hand analysis.

5. Do NOT indicate what the outcome of the hand is, especially in the opening post. This is a truly irrelevant piece of information, since it's an unknown variable when you acted throughout the hand. It also biases the analysis; if I know that you got sucked out on the river, I may not think clearly about what your action should have been on the flop.

6. Do NOT post brags and bad beats in Hand Analysis. Post those in the Brags, Bad Beats and Challenges forum. Believe me, we feel for you, we sympathize, we've been there, we're happy for you, you're an awesome player - but that's not relevant to hand analysis.

7. Do NOT post in Hand Analysis for the sake of posting. If you're commenting in a thread, try to have something to contribute, whether it's proposing a solution, an amplification of a point someone else has already made, or a question about the analysis. Posts like "Ditto", "Nice hand", "me too" do not add value to the hand and will be deleted.

8. Read the entire thread. Some threads are too long to make this practical every time, but it's rare for this to be the case in HA. If someone's already made the point you're making, don't make your point (unless you're extending the point already made). If the point you're about to make is at odds with another post in the thread, take that other post into account in making your post.

9. Be respectful. This applies to anywhere in the forum, but particularly in Hand Analysis. You should never belittle anyone for making what you perceive to be a poor play. They are posting here to learn from their mistakes and get better. Likewise, if you are posting hands for analysis, be ready to listen and keep your ego at the door.