Poker Hand Scout Offering Free Hand Histories

Poker Hand Scout is a service available to players looking to purchase online poker hand histories, which can be imported into tracking programs such as PokerTracker 3, Holdem Manager, Poker Office, and more.  Recently, Poker Hand Scout has been revamped with a few new features for its customers.

Popularity of tracking programs like PokerTracker 3 and Holdem Manager exploded in 2009.  These allow tracking of results and game play tendency statistics after importing hand history files.  When a user plays online poker at sites such as PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker, hand histories are automatically generated and imported into the tracking program.  This tracks all hero and opponent stats.

Another import facet of these hand history tracking programs is that they employ a Heads-Up Display (HUD).  Game play stats such as Voluntarily Put Money into the Pot (VPIP), Pre-Flop Raise Percentage (PFR), and 3betting are displayed in an overlay that appears in a small box next to each player.  As a player gains more hands on a player, a clearer picture of their tendencies appears in the HUD.  This allows a person to develop decisions based on the stats if they have enough hands for them to mean something.  The more hands you have on a player, the more accurate the stats are in the HUD.

This is where Poker Hand Scout assists its customers by supplying bulk hand histories to import into their program of choice.  Poker Hand Scout supports PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, the iPoker Network, PartyPoker, Empire Poker, and the CEREUS Network.  It tracks hands from Texas Hold’em (No Limit and Fixed Limit) as well as Pot Limit Omaha.  Visiting the “Statistics” section of the site shows a new bar chart with the number of hands mined every day.  There are filters to show reports by site, game, stakes level, and game type.

Within the “Purchase” section are Bulk and Retail transactions.  The Bulk purchase will bring you a set number of hands in a big zip file via a download link.  This is the best method if you do not have many hand histories for a specific game in your database.  The Retail purchase will subscribe you to daily e-mails with the previous day’s hand history link.  With a retail purchase, you can buy hand histories for a period of four weeks.  This is the best method if you already have a bunch of hands in your database, but want to keep it fresh moving forward.

The site also has a downloadable software client that makes retrieval of your hand history orders much easier.  Instead of having to go into your e-mail every day, download a file, unzip it, and then initiate the import, the software client automates the entire process.  This is available for free to anyone who visits the site.

One of the best new features at Poker Hand Scout is that the site is giving away sample hand history files for anyone to try out.  Simply go to the FAQ page and scroll down to the “Can I have some sample hands?” question.  The answer, to the bliss of many, is yes.  Simply select the site, game, stakes, and table type.  Click the “Download” button and you’ll receive sample hand history files to import.  Given the fact that this is completely free, it’s a show of good faith by the site.

If you are looking for a site to buy hands to import into your poker database, then you’ll want to take advantage of the free offer in the FAQ section. Note that data mining programs can be against the Terms and Conditions of online poker sites.