Before you post your first (or 10th) hand history, please read...

TheGameKat

Hi everyone, thanks once again to alert forum member @LeChiffre and others who have noted that some of the hand histories that have been posted recently could... er... do with some polishing.

A couple of important points here. I very much want this forum to be useful to players from newbies to old hacks who live in darkened mansions playing with solvers. So I understand why experienced players get frustrated when HHs are presented in such a way that any meaningful analysis is rendered almost impossible. Equally I am sensitive to the needs of those who may have come here to post their first hand history ever. That is intimidating enough in itself, and to be given a list of how they screwed up, while invariably well-intentioned, may not appear particularly welcoming.

We are looking for a technological solution to this that would involve hardwiring a HH template into the forum, but honestly our dear hosts did not create their plug-ins with that kind of functionality in mind.

So as an interim or possibly permanent solution, I would ask all new posters to read this:

http://persuadeo.nl/hand-histories/

The entire article is excellent, but if you're part of the tl;dr crowd, please at least scroll down to the middle where persuadeo lays out in detail what a good HH should contain.

Tyia ~ Kat

ps: There are some advocates for "Share My Pair" as a live converter, but I honestly never got on with it. However, the discussion on posting online hands here at RCP may also prove helpful with live ones: https://forum.redchippoker.com/discussion/6/how-to-share-a-poker-hand

Red

Good thing @TheGameKat . You should "pin" this thread so any newcomer can easily find it.

I'd add: don't post the resolution of your hand directly, or hide is as spoiler [_spoiler][/_spoiler] (without _)

And do your homework! Don't only post a hand and ask "what would you do?" / "Is my line ok".
Break your hand down, explain us your strategy, show us your range and the range you put Villain on. Show us pot odds, break even %, EV calculation.
It's way better for your to do that - it's the essence of studying poker ! - and way more interesting for us reader.
Even if you don't have to go that far, here is an example of one of my own hand I posted here: https://forum.redchippoker.com/discussion/8911/2-5-squeeze-called-but-getting-raised-on-flop

jeffnc

I vote for posting the answer at some point. I'm OK with posting it as a spoiler but I know a lot of people think it's bad to know ahead of time, in which case it's good for the OP to come back and post it later. IMO it's just as important we build a database of known hands in forum answers just as we want to see what hands are played in real life.

TheGameKat

Red wrote: »

Good thing @TheGameKat . You should "pin" this thread so any newcomer can easily find it.

I'd add: don't post the resolution of your hand directly, or hide is as spoiler [_spoiler][/_spoiler] (without _)

And do your homework! Don't only post a hand and ask "what would you do?" / "Is my line ok".
Break your hand down, explain us your strategy, show us your range and the range you put Villain on. Show us pot odds, break even %, EV calculation.
It's way better for your to do that - it's the essence of studying poker ! - and way more interesting for us reader.
Even if you don't have to go that far, here is an example of one of my own hand I posted here: https://forum.redchippoker.com/discussion/8911/2-5-squeeze-called-but-getting-raised-on-flop

It's pinned in this category, I don't like cluttering the front page too much

Paul_K

Not a big fan of the spoiler feature. Most often, the final result of the hand isn't that important anyway.

jeffnc

Paul_K wrote: »

Most often, the final result of the hand isn't that important anyway.

This is analogous to saying that seeing your opponents' cards at showdown when playing isn't that important, IMO. I think it's important to build a mental database of what villains have in these hands of interest. If you're going to say that you're not playing in that game so the results aren't applicable to your games, then no one would be able to help anyone with hand examples to begin with.

persuadeo

1. The article does comment on results/spoilers.
2. The article does not go to the depths Red recommends, which has good and bad qualities:

a. He is right that more and deeper work is better on the whole.
b. However, too much work can push someone down a wrong hole even further, so I liken the idea of a hand history as the start of conversation, not a thesis paper. Complete in what it needs, incomplete in what needs to be discussed.

So I'm not sure where i stand on this aspect of the hh anymore. Probably best left to the individual and what he wants to get from the thread.

TheGameKat

persuadeo wrote: »

1. The article does comment on results/spoilers.
2. The article does not go to the depths Red recommends, which has good and bad qualities:

a. He is right that more and deeper work is better on the whole.
b. However, too much work can push someone down a wrong hole even further, so I liken the idea of a hand history as the start of conversation, not a thesis paper. Complete in what it needs, incomplete in what needs to be discussed.

So I'm not sure where i stand on this aspect of the hh anymore. Probably best left to the individual and what he wants to get from the thread.

Yeah it's a difficult balance. When I see a detailed range analysis in the top post I confess I tend to glaze over. My personal preference as a reader is to have all the action clearly laid out with relevant player profiles. A follow up range analysis after we've all digested the basics is one possible solution.

Anyway, I have no intention of being draconian about this, particularly since different hands may benefit from slightly different presentation. Mostly trying to help those new to HH posting to improve their clarity and thus the quality of the feedback.

jeffnc

Yeah, I know I get picked at for being picky, but the better language they use, the less people tend to "glaze over", the more likely someone is to read it seriously, and the better the feedback they get.

Doug Hull

1:01am (why this timestamp? See bottom)

Why are clear, concise hand histories important to writer and the reader?

In a word: Respect.

No one is getting paid, with the possible exception of Kat, to read or respond to these posts. In spite of this, there is a ton of quality feedback and very little drivel.

As someone that is asking the questions, your goal is to get this help. Attention is a finite resource and one you need to respect. Fairly often I will look in on a question and see it is poorly written and realize I will need to spend more time reading (and rereading it) to *maybe* answer the question the poster was trying to ask. These poorly written posts do not respect my time as an answerer. I will often skip them or if in a particularly feisty mood, I will parse them and rewrite them to model good behavior.

When you post a poorly formatted question, the five minutes you "saved" by not going back to edit and make sure the post is clear will be "wasted" by 50 potential answerers. As a questioner, your editing time is leveraged by this multiple reader effect, this should encourage you to really be clear in posting questions.

There is no shortage of questions, the shortage is of good answers. Making your question clear shows respect and that means you are far more likely to get what you seek: a good answer or multiple answers.

Why the timestamp at the top? That is when I started writing this. It is now 1:23am. Twenty-two minutes to write even this, because I want to respect my readers by making sure I am clear.