Guide to Buying Hand Histories
PokerDatamining.NET is a guide I have made made for those, who can not afford my coaching.
On this page I will explain how you can gets started buying hand histories, and why the heck you would want to that in the first place.
Originally the site were mostly about datamining, but today it makes more sense to buy the hands instead.
The biggest benefits of buying hand histories or datamining yourself is that it:
- Increase your winrate (instantly).
- Prevent downswings.
Below you can see a list of sites that sell hand histories as well as which poker rooms and networks they have hands from:
Sites Selling Hand Histories
Fast Delivery | ||||||||||
Popular Choice | ||||||||||
Good for Repeat Buyers | ||||||||||
Best for Repeat Buyers | ||||||||||
Best for Europeans | ||||||||||
Great cheap service | ||||||||||
Support Pacific Poker/888 |
Table showing hand history resellers and which poker rooms they sell hands from.
Note: Some poker rooms consider datamining and purchasing hands to be an unfair advantage.
Reviews of Hand History Resellers
To help you figure out where you should buy your hand histories, I have written in depth reviews of the 3 hand history resellers I'm most familiar with:
Each review includes a video walkthough showing how to buy hand histories from the site and how they are delivered.
How the Heck Can Buying Hand Histories Prevent Downswings?
If you are anything like me, you know that downswings are just part of playing poker. But if you think back, I'm sure you have felt miserable each time you lost 15 buy ins in 10.000 hands, just like I do.
Buying datamined hands can help prevent those downswings, and as a result the periods where you don't play very much because you are demoralized by running bad.
Getting extra hand histories amplifies the skills of a good player, since it gives you more information about the opponents, and as a result you can make better decisions. This means that your winrate will be higher, which reduce the size of any downswing you run into.
How a High Winrate Prevents Downswings
When playing poker you both lose and win pots, and your winnings (or losses) are the difference between the pots you have won and the pots you have lost.
So if Player A and Player B play 10.000 hands the following may happen.
Player A
Lost: 100 buy ins
Won: 90 buy ins
Result: lost 10 buy ins
Player A
Lost: 100 buy ins
Won: 110 buy ins
Result: won 10 buy ins
Even though both players lost 100 buy ins in the pots they played, Player B comes out far ahead because he were winning more money in the pots he won.
With this in mind take a look at the simulation of a downswing below.
Example
Below are a graph showing 2 players playing NL Hold'Em. I have used data from my own Holdem Manager database to make sure it is realistic, and modified it so both players experience the same amount of "luck". This means that whenever one player is "unlucky", the other player is exactly as unlucky.
The evolution of 2 player's bankroll showing the significance of a higher winrate.
The blue player has a winrate of 4bb/100 hands
The purple player has a winrate of 8bb/100 hands.
The Significance of a Higher Winrate
Lets have a look at what happens to our 2 players from the 60.000 hand mark to 70.000 hands mark.
Starting balance (at the 60.000 hand mark)Blue Player: 16 buy ins.
Purple Player: 40 buy ins.
Both player have a pretty ugly downswing, and at the 70.000 hand mark they end up with the following:
Starting balance (at the 70.000 hand mark)
Blue Player: -10 buy ins (lost 26 buy ins).
Purple Player: 19 buy ins (lost 21 buy ins).
The purple player's downswing were 5 buy ins smaller due to the fact that his winrate is higher and as a result he managed to win an extra 5 buy ins during the 10.000 hand downswing. His higher winrate also means that he is quite the baller when compared to the blue player, but you probably knew that already 
Ready to Get Started?
To make it easy for you to get started, I have made a list of sites that sell hand histories as well as a guide explaining exactly how to do it.
My guide: Where to buy hand histories