How a poker hand review actually works

Replaying a hand yourself - opening the history, trying to remember what happened - almost always ends at "eh, seemed fine" or "ugh, just bad luck". A real review starts with exact numbers for every decision, not a feeling in hindsight, and someone asking why you did what you did - not just calling it wrong.

First, the numbers - no guessing

A hand-history file is an exact record: who bet how much and when, which cards showed up. From it you can compute, not estimate: how often you enter a pot voluntarily, how many chips a specific decision cost you, what the pot odds were at the moment you called, what your hand's equity was against the villain's range. We do this with a precise algorithm, not the coach and not a language model: the numbers come out the same every run, they're never just a "feeling".

VPIP

How often you voluntarily enter a pot pre-flop - by calling or raising. High means you're playing lots of hands, low means you're tight.

Formula: (hands with money voluntarily in the pot / total hands) × 100

Pot odds

How much you need to put in relative to what's already in the pot - compared against your chance to improve, to see if calling pays off.

Formula: call amount / (pot + call amount)

Equity

Your share of the pot right now - the percentage chance you win the hand against a villain's hand or range.

Not a formula - exact enumeration: every possible runout against the villain's hand or range, no rounding

Then, questions - not a ready-made verdict

The coach doesn't open with "you were wrong, here's the right answer". First it asks: what range did you put your opponent on, why that bet size, what were you thinking at the moment of the decision. Only after your answer - checked against the numbers, not a guess - does it say what actually happened. The difference is you arrive at the conclusion yourself, on your own numbers, instead of memorizing someone else's ready answer that fades by the next hand.

What a review isn't

Not a solver

The coach doesn't hand you a "GTO-correct" answer down to the percent - it checks your hand against reference charts and explains the gap. There's no single correct range - this is our own agreed baseline, not an absolute.

Not real-time advice

A review is always about hands already played, after the tournament - never advice during play. Real-time assistance (RTA) is banned on most rooms - Whygrid never touches a live hand.

Not a promise to win

A review finds the decisions that repeat and cost you money over the long run. Fixing a leak isn't a guarantee you'll win any given tournament - poker stays a game with variance.

What you need to get started

A hand-history file from your poker room - GGPoker, PokerStars, Winamax, 888poker, and others. Upload the whole tournament, the room is detected automatically, opponents' nicknames are anonymized.

Not sure where to find the files - room-by-room guide

The first tournament review is free, no card required.

Upload a tournament