How to post a hand for commentary

[frob23]

There are a lot of people who post hands on here for commentary or because other people request a couple hands to get an idea of how people play. At a bare minimum you need to include certain information to get any real help. I'm going to give an example of a hand and show the differences between what some people say and what actually helps.

I called a raise pre-flop with 5-2 and the flop came 5-8-2. The other person bet and I raised. The turn was a 3, I bet again and he called. The river was a 10 and I bet and he was all-in. How often am I winning when he calls here?

The above is a fairly typical hand description from a lot of players. The question itself is just something I threw on the end to make it like a post might be.

Playing $10NL. The table is 9-handed.

Hero: $10.78
BB: $10.15

Hero: 5-2

Hero posts $0.05, BB posts $0.10. It folds around to Hero who calls $0.05. BB raises to $0.30. Hero calls $0.20.

FLOP: 5-8-2 ($0.60)
Hero checks, BB bets $0.50, Hero raises to $1.50, BB calls $1.00.

TURN: 5-8-2-3 ($3.60)
Hero bets $2.50, BB calls $2.50

RIVER: 5-8-2-3-T ($8.60)
Hero bets $6.00, BB calls $5.85 (all-in)

How often am I ahead when he calls on the river here?

The above is the bare minimum information. As you can see, it is a lot more information. It isn't everything. I removed the stacks of all the players who didn't see a flop. I did mention how many people were at the table though -- that can be important -- but since they folded, I didn't bother including details on them. I didn't include any reads on the Big-Blind or discuss any previous hands.

I did include the blinds, stack sizes, the action, the size of the pot, and the suits of the cards involved. I kept it all in a logical and laid out order. And I broke it out into several steps to help people follow how the hand played out. A more detailed hand will have every player's stacks and actions at the table. It will also include a brief description of each involved player and their image. And it might include a description of recent hands that may play a role.

The above isn't perfect but it is helpful. And it will give others a huge starting point when they want to help you. It is not a whole lot of work to write a hand out like this. It takes a few more minutes but it helps you organize the hand itself and makes it simple.

PS. For the sake of my sanity, raw hand histories should be cleaned up like the above. It can be very hard to make sense of the raw history when reading it on a web page.

[C8H10N4O2]

This is very much needed around here. Good post. I say from this point on, when anyone asks for help, if it doesn't follow the above, just link them to this page.