Marking Hands Made Easy with AutoHotKey

Any serious poker player knows they must review their hand histories in order to improve their game.  Most players are stuck sifting through thousands of hands after their sessions trying to find the ones they want to review.  Some even load pots into a hand history replayer to watch their hands and spot possible leaks.  The problem with either one of these scenarios is that there is no efficient way to find the key hands you want to review.

Many times, you lose a big hand and think, “I played that hand terribly. I want to review it later”, but if you don’t remember the hand number or write it down, you will likely have trouble finding it again.  Even if you load your hand histories into a program like Holdem Manager, filtering through to find the ones you want to review requires a little work.  Thankfully, we discovered an AutoHotKey (AHK) script that will make your life easier when marking hands for review.

Mark Hand is an AHK script that allows you to mark your current hand with a simple keystroke for playback in Holdem Manger.  The concept is extremely useful and has received rave reviews in the forums.

Here is how it works.  When you press the first hotkey you choose, the script reads the window title of your active table, waits for the hand to be written to the hand history file, extracts its number, and all collected hand numbers are written to a simple text file.

When you are finished with your session, simply press the second hotkey you choose and all of the hand numbers you marked will be compiled into a SQL script, which will be executed in your PostgreSQL folder.  This allows Holdem Manager to show all of the hands you marked during your session at once.

The first time you use Mark Hand, you will need to enter a few settings.  The program works for PokerStars and Full Tilt, so you will need to define where your hand histories are stored.  Additionally, you will need to define your hotkeys and your Holdem Manager database settings.  Currently, you can’t use hotkeys that include the Windows button or mouse clicks.  Here is what the setup screen looks like:



To download and install the program, follow these easy steps:

1. Make sure you have Auto Hot Key installed.

2. Copy and paste the code into a new .ahk file and name it markhand.AHK.

3. Double click the file you just created to launch the script.

4. Fill in the settings on the Mark Hand menu that will appear.

Mark Hand is very easy to set up and extremely useful.  The program runs in the background, so the only graphical user interface you will see is the settings module.  Mark Hand will certainly save you time reviewing sessions.  The AHK script has received such respect from the community that players are actively petitioning Holdem Manager and Table Ninja to purchase the functionality from the creators of the program or introduce this functionality into their programs.

It’s rare that poker players like a program so much that they try to persuade industry leaders to incorporate another product into theirs, which is why you should check it out for yourself.  Go see what everyone is raving about.  You will likely begin using Mark Hand everyday just as many others have.