If you don’t want to use Poker-Edge (and we have no idea why anyone in the world wouldn’t), you can do things the hard way by importing hand histories into PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager.
Poker hand histories are a detailed log of the all action that happens in a poker hand. It shows the stack size of every player as well as any fold, bet, call, or raise on every street.
Players can use hand histories to go back and analyze the hands they’ve played to try to spot mistakes and figure out how they could have played a hand better. You can also import hand histories into Hold’em Manager or PokerTracker. Doing so is a much more efficient way of managing your hands since thousands of hand can easily get overwhelming. You’ll be able to playback your hands in a nifty replayer and you’ll also see statistics on your opponents. Stats are useful because they provide a high level overview that you can’t get by just looking at individual hands.
Getting the hand histories of hands you were actually involved in is easy. Most poker rooms save the hands right on your hard drive and you just need to tell Hold’em Manager or PokerTracker where that folder is located. From there, the software will just automatically import the hands. The problem is, this is a really slow process and you’ll have very limited data. There are ways, however, to build your database FAST. You can just buy hand histories and import them directly into your database. Millions of hands are available at almost any stake and game type for as low as $12.
Thousands of people have already bought hand histories to get an edge on their opponents.
