Analysing Hand History Data with Sklansky Groups

Using the concept of Sklansky groups in devising your own poker strategy is very efficient if you can structure the statistics of your play in the groups. The reason for this is twofold:

• The hands in a group have similar value. That means that you may generalize about larger set of data.
• There is a lot of theory already written on how to correctly play hands in different groups, which gives you excellent opportunity to bench-mark your result.

To make the best of the analysis, you will need to compile the information about your hands. One way to do this is by using a poker analysis service. One such service that offers analysis according to the Sklansky groups is CardAnalyzer.com. Besides providing information on tens of thousands of opponents, you also receive an overview of all your played hands through your hand histories. Another very useful service is TenCommandmentsOfPoker.com a "tutor" which uses the groups to determine if you play the right hands while analyzing your play.

The starting hands are divided by group, table size, position and aggression (raise or call). This shows which hands you make money from and which you don’t. Naturally, this sometimes deviates from the theory, but by getting the information sorted according to the groups, you have the chance to find these and address them separately.

Here is an example of what it could look like:

Sklansky group summary:

From this information we can see that the player is making much more money on group one hands than on group eight hands in the blinds. This is not very surprising and we can also note a few other patterns. The effect of raising in the big blind was not very successful. The player has made much more money from just calling and then acting on later betting rounds. The reason for this can be a combination of different factors which each have to be analysed.

• Playing from the big blind on subsequent betting rounds is a bad position meaning that the profit will be smaller when winning.
• By making it two bets pre-flop, in a loose game (4-6 players on the flop) there have been good odds for drawing with hands like inside straight draws on the flop, which makes drawing hands stronger and hence high pairs lose in value.
• The player may not be so good at playing dominating hands maximizing the profit. After all, we only win 60% of the hands and playing major pairs in early position often means betting out all the way, losing money when getting outdrawn and in a loose game.