The Best Places to Buy Hand Histories

On this page I have gathered a list of the best places to buy hand histories.

About the List

The hand history sellers on this page are all services I have used myself, and would buy from again.

Some of the sites have been in business for several years, while others are are fairly new. What they all have in common is that it is easy to buy hands form them, and they deliver them to you fast.

In addition it is easy to get in touch with their support, and you can be sure that they take the time to help you (I tested this by sending them "stupid" questions from a new Gmail account).

These people basically know what they are doing, and will give you bang for your bucks.

How to Buy Hand Histories

During the past 12 months it has become very easy to buy hand histories. All you have to do is to the site that you want to buy from, select the poker room and stakes you want hand histories from, as well as how many you want.

When you have done this, all you need to do is select your payment method, and the email address you want the hands sent to. When you have done this, it is time to place your order and pay.

1-2 hours after sending the payment, you will get an email with a link to where you can download your new hands.

Please note that it sometimes takes a bit longer than 2 hours before you get the download link. Opposed to when you order an ebook or subscription to a coaching site, all hand history orders are unique, since the sites continuously collect new hands. This means that there is a limit to how fast orders can be "packaged" and sent.

Benefits

Buying hand histories gives you the benefits of datamining, without having to spend the time to set the handgrabber up and make sure that it is gathering hands.

In addition you can buy many more hands than you would ever be able to gather yourself, even if you were datamining 24/7.

Drawbacks

When you buy hand histories you are of course limited to the tables and stakes that the site you buy from has chosen. This isn't a problem for most people, but if you need hands from an uncommon game likeHU Omaha, you may be better off datamining yourself.

If you are are in doubt whether you should datamine yourself or buy the hand histories, be sure to read the next section, since it will help you decide.

Before You Buy

It is a good idea check how old the hand histories are before you buy them.

Buying old hand histories won't cause you any problems, since both Pokertracker 3 and Holdem Manager's HUDs has filters that can exclude old hand histories, so you won't be seeing stats based on how your opponents were playing 6 months ago.

Even though old the old hands won't hurt you, they don't do a whole lot to help you either either, so they are usually a waste of money.

As a general rule of thumb, I don't buy hand histories that are more than 3 months old.

Old hand histories usually isn't an issue when you are buying hands from popular games fx. NL200$ at Full Tilt Poker, but if you are buying HU hands or some other kind of "rare" hand histories, it is crucial to know when they were datamined.

Fortunately a lot of the hand history sellers will show you how old the hands are before you buy. You can read a short guide on how to check the age of the hands below.

How to See When the Hands Were Gathered

Both Hand HQ and HHDealer let you see when the hand histories you are buying were datamined.

Hand HQ show the age of the hands as part of the order process. Below are a short description of how to see it (you don't have to place an order to see it).

1. Go to this page.
2. Select the site, game type, level,number of players and number of hands.
3. Click "Continue".

HHDealer does things in a slightly different way, they have a dedicated page that allow you to see how many hand histories they have datamined during the last, week, 2 weeks and month. Since they always send you the newest hand histories when buying from them, you can look up how many hand they have collected this month, and then work out which hands you will be getting. I have written a short step by step guide below.

1. Go to this page.
2. Select the site, game type, stakes, number of players and the time frame.
3. Click "Show".

Are you ready to get started? Buy hand histories now.