What Use Or Value Is The Sky Poker Hand History Feature To Me?

One of the most exciting things when you join a new site like Sky Poker is trying out all the different features of the site that your membership grants you access to. On Sky Poker there are many different aspects of the site including the busy (and hugely important) Community, the Academy to help novice players improve and of course, the My Sky Poker section for all things to do with your account.

It is within this latter section of the site that you will find perhaps one of the most important features on the site, yet for many new poker players, it is often ignored and only ever used when they want to check up on what they perceive may be an error. That section is your Hand History section.

In this article, we are going to examine how your Hand History can be a hugely beneficial tool for you as a poker player. We will explain why this is and how you can use the information contained within it to help make you a more formidable opponent at the online tables.

Just a quick reminder that if you are not yet a member, claim your Sky Poker no deposit bonus by clicking on the link and you could be walking away with £20 worth of tournament tokens, plus a 200% first deposit bonus of up to £500 when you join.

What is my Hand History on Sky Poker?

Starting at the very beginning, your Hand History on Sky Poker is simply a log of all the hands you have played on the site across the wide variety of different games available.

Each time you log on to Sky Poker and join a poker game, Sky Poker’s software will log each individual hand you are involved in and save it to your Hand History. You can then search through the hands you played using the features of the Hand History section.

You can search via:

• Hands From – This allows you to specify a time frame for when you want any hands played shown. You can pick from the last hour to the last week.
• Game Format – A choice between Hold’em, Omaha or Omaha Hi Lo
• Format – Another filter between Cash Games, or Tournaments (Sit and Go games are included under the Tournament bracket, once it has been selected)
• Winnings More Than £ – Enter an amount for the software to show you any hands where you won more than the stated amount
• Losses More Than £ – Enter an amount for the software to display any hands where you lost more than the stated amount
• Search by Hand ID – Every hand on Sky Poker at every table generates a unique ID number. You can use this to note down a particular hand and then enter this here to find the hand in question. The Hand ID is displayed clearly on every table at Sky Poker at the top centre of the pop up poker table screen.

What use is the Hand History feature to me?

Many novice players assume that the Hand History feature is only useful to them if they want to check that there hasn’t been a glitch in the game, or if they didn’t quite see how a hand finished and so they want to check back and see why they didn’t, or did, win a hand when they thought otherwise.

Now your Hand History can certainly be used for that and indeed, any queries about a hand you want to raise with Sky Poker, all you need is the ID number of the hand and Sky Poker will look any issues you raise with them for you.

However, there is a far better use for your hand history than simply checking back to see whether a hand was paid out correctly or not. Used correctly, your Hand History can be the most powerful diagnostic tool you can use to help improve your poker game rapidly and for a beginner player, that is extremely useful.

One of the best ways to learn about poker is to learn from your mistakes. Reviewing the hands you played well and won is all fine and dandy, but there’s not a lot to learn from those. However, load up your Hand History from the hands you lost when you thought you should have won and didn’t understand why, and you can slowly start to unpick how more skilled players go about drawing less experienced players in before executing a coup de grace and taking their cash.

All the best poker players spend a good deal of time reviewing their play to ensure that they are playing optimally, to see if certain players play in a certain style (or maybe have a tell) and also to see why they are experiencing an upward, or downward trend in their results.

Of course, having the information there via the Hand History is one thing. Having the skill to decode this and draw valuable information from it is another, but Sky Poker has the perfect place to help novice players develop these skills.

Using your Hand History information in conjunction with the Sky Poker Community

As a novice player, it is simple to get plentiful useful feedback on any hand you play by posting details of the hand in the Sky Poker Community. Simply head on over to the Community Section and click on The Poker Clinic.

In this section, you can post details of your hand using the unique User ID for the hand in question. This places a shorthand description of your hand on the post and allows all the Sky Poker Forum users to work through the hand to see how you played and your opponents played.

Using this information, far more experienced players can help explain why the hand worked out like it did and offer you guidance and advice as to what they would have done in the same situation.  There are a large number of these posts in The Poker Clinic and even just reading through some posts can help you gain a better insight in terms of how to play in certain spots.

The feedback you receive from multiple forum users, many of whom are vastly experienced poker players can be invaluable in helping you learn some of the subtle strategies and skills that will turn you from a poker novice, into a much stronger player in as short a space of time as possible.