[Xanta]

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What the best way to study the hands you've played, and improve from them? I have Poker tracker of course. Looking to put serious effort into improving my game, and I'll do anything practical to do so ($200/hr coach not practical).

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There are a couple pretty simple ways to get a good insight into your play and how you might improve.

1) Every session, every hand that you play, have a pen and paper in front of you. If you hit a hand where you're unsure of the correct action, or felt that you played badly, just write down your hole cards. After the session, fire up PT and find the hand (using your hole cards) and take a look again. If you can't make a decision, ask a friend or post it on the forums.

2) After every session, go into the Game Notes tab on poker tracker, click 'Get All' and then sort the hands by money won/lost. Spend 15 minutes going over every substantial pot. If you feel you played it OK, ask yourself 'what would happen if I raised here instead of called?' 'What range is he raising on the flop' 'What does my equity need to be to call his shove here,' questions like that. Basically, a lot of our wins and losses come from big pots. Go over them with a fine tooth comb, in more detail than you can get into with the 20 seconds you get at the table.

These two methods will help you fix the leaks that you're kind of aware of, and will also help you find new lines in situations that you always played one way and were happy with.

PT is a great tool, but if you don't use it then it won't make you better.