hand history
Read the hand back.
A hand history is written for a machine. Paste one here and it comes back as sentences: what happened on every street, what the board looked like at the time, and how much was in the middle. No score, no verdict, no advice. Just the hand, readable.
Nothing loaded yet. Press the example button to see the shape of the output first, or paste your own hand straight in. Nothing you put in this box leaves your browser.
the worked example
This is the same hand the example button loads, retold by the code in this page at the moment it was built. Six players, blinds of 50 and 100, the cutoff opening and the button calling, and 3,400 in the middle by the end. The pot after each street is the pot itself, not an estimate of it.
Preflop
- SB posts 50
- BB posts 100
- UTG folds
- MP folds
- CO raises to 250
- BTN calls 250
- SB folds
- BB calls 150
pot 800 still in: BB, CO, BTN
Flop
- BB checks
- CO bets 400
- BTN calls 400
- BB folds
pot 1,600 still in: CO, BTN
Turn
- CO bets 900
- BTN calls 900
pot 3,400 still in: CO, BTN
River
- CO checks
- BTN checks
pot 3,400 still in: CO, BTN
Read like that, the shape of the hand is obvious in a way it never is in the raw text: the button called twice and never once took the lead. What that cost him is a separate question, and one this page will not answer. The hand analyzer prices every decision in the same hand and shows the odds each call was being offered.
what a history contains
Everything except the reason.
A history holds the seats, the stacks, the button, the blinds, every action in order, the board as it came, and who collected. That is enough to rebuild the hand exactly. What it does not hold is anything about why: not what the other player would have done with a different card, not what he does with the rest of his range, not what the two of you were doing an hour ago. Any tool that reads one hand and hands you a verdict is filling that in from nowhere.
Read enough of them and the patterns do appear, which is the whole point of keeping them. The statistics page covers what those patterns are called and how many hands each one needs, and the import page explains what happens when you hand over a whole folder of them instead of one.
If you have no history of your own to paste yet, the fastest way to get one is to make it. Playing a few hands in the browser produces hands in the same format, without an account and without money. And if a line in your file is not clear, the glossary has a page for every term that turns up in one. If you play on GGPoker, the export route is written out step by step, and the overview says which sites we actually walked through.
next step
Now find out what it cost.
The same hand, with the arithmetic filled in: the pot before every decision, the price of every call, and the share of the time that call has to win to break even. Same browser, same absence of an account.
questions
What is a poker hand history?
It is the text record a poker site writes for every hand you play: who sat where, who held the button, what each player put in on each street, which cards came, and who collected the pot. It is the only complete record of what happened, and it is written for machines rather than for people, which is why it takes a moment to read.
What does this viewer do with it?
It turns those lines into ordinary sentences, street by street, with the board as it stood at each point and the size of the pot at the end of every street. Nothing is judged and nothing is scored. It is a translation, not an opinion.
What is the difference with the hand analyzer?
The analyzer works out the price of every decision in the hand: what was in the pot before the action, what it cost to call, and what share of the time that call has to win to break even. This page deliberately leaves that out and does the reading instead. Use this one to see what happened, and the analyzer to see what it cost.
Which formats does it understand?
The common text export used by PokerStars and by the many sites that copy its layout: the street markers, the seat and button lines, the blind and ante posts, and the actions. Any line it cannot read is listed at the bottom instead of being quietly skipped, so you can always see how much of your hand it actually understood.
Is my hand history uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything is read in your browser, and nothing is sent, stored or logged. Close the tab and it is gone. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.
Where do I find my own hand histories?
Most sites let you export them from the client or from their hand history section, and some post them by mail on request. Where the file lives and what it looks like differs per site, which is exactly why a viewer that reads the common format is useful before you know your way around.
further in the app
In Pokiq your hands are read in bulk instead of one at a time, and the leaks that cost you most come out on top. Your first import and your most expensive leak are free, with no payment details.
Open in Pokiq →