How to Submit Poker Hands to Your Coach (The Right Way)

Say your coach charges $200 an hour. And you are sending them hands that look like this:

"Had KK in MP, guy 3-bet from BTN, I 4-bet, he called. Flop came low, I bet, he raised, I called. Turn was a Q, checked through. River bricked, I bet and he folded."

That is not a hand history. That is a sketch from memory with half the information missing. Your coach can work with it — but they are spending the first ten minutes of your session just reconstructing what happened. That is time you are paying for.

There is a better way. If you want to get more out of the coaching relationship, structured hand histories are the starting point. This guide covers exactly what your coach needs, how to prepare hands before a session, and the workflow that gets the most coaching value per dollar.

What Your Coach Actually Needs

Most coaches work inside analysis tools — PokerTracker 4, Holdem Manager 3, GTO Wizard. These are the same tools they use to break down online hands. When your online-playing peers send hands for review, their coach can load the file, filter by position or street, and instantly see the full picture.

When you send a text message with "I think villain had about 40k, maybe 35k," you are giving your coach a puzzle with missing pieces.

Here is what a complete hand submission includes:

• Stack sizes for every player involved in the hand. Not "around 40BB." The actual numbers. Stack-to-pot ratio analysis falls apart without accurate stacks.
• Exact bet sizes. "He bet big" tells your coach nothing useful. 2.5x, 3x, and 4x opens produce completely different decision trees.
• Position of every player involved. Did villain 3-bet from the cutoff or the small blind? The answer changes the entire range analysis.
• Complete action on every street. Not just the streets where something "interesting" happened. The preflop action sets up the postflop decisions. Skipping it removes context.
• Cards shown at showdown (when available). If you saw villain's hand, include it. Showdown data lets your coach assess whether villain's line made sense — and whether your read was calibrated.

That is the minimum. The more detail you capture, the more your coach can do with the hand.

The Three Ways to Submit Hands (Ranked)

Not all submission formats are equal. Here they are, from best to worst.

1. PokerStars-Format Hand History Files

This is the gold standard. A structured .txt file that your coach can import directly into PokerTracker 4, Holdem Manager 3, or GTO Wizard. Every detail — positions, stacks, actions, bet sizes, cards — is in a standardized format that analysis tools read natively.

Why this is the best option: your coach can run the hand through equity analysis, compare your action to solver outputs, and flag the exact decision point where your line diverged from what the math says. No reconstruction needed. No guessing about stack sizes.

A hand logging app like LiveHands captures your hands in this format at the table, so you walk away from the session with files ready to send.

2. Structured Text With All Details

If you do not have a file-based option, you can type out the hand in a structured format. This is significantly better than a casual text message, but it requires discipline.

A solid format looks like this:

Event: $500 NLH Tournament, Level 12 (1000/2000/2000) Effective stacks: Hero 85,000 (42.5BB), Villain 62,000 (31BB) Hero position: Cutoff Villain position: Big Blind

Preflop: Hero opens to 4,500 with A♠K♦. Villain 3-bets to 14,000. Hero calls. Flop (Pot: 30,000): 9♠ 7♦ 2♣. Villain bets 10,000. Hero calls. Turn (Pot: 50,000): K♥. Villain checks. Hero bets 22,000. Villain calls. River (Pot: 94,000): 5♦. Villain checks. Hero bets 16,000 (remaining stack). Villain folds.

Hero's question: Was the river shove too thin? Should I have checked back given the 3-bet pot and villain's check-call on the turn?

Notice how every number is there. Stacks, blind level, bet sizes, pot sizes. Your coach can actually analyze this hand without asking you five follow-up questions.

3. Casual Text or Voice Memo

This is what most live students send. It is also what wastes the most coaching time.

Casual submissions almost always have missing stack sizes, approximate bet amounts, and incomplete action sequences. Your coach ends up spending the first chunk of your session asking, "How much did he bet? What position were you in? What were the effective stacks?"

If this is your only option, at least include: effective stacks in BB, exact positions, and bet sizes as specific numbers (not "he bet big" or "I raised a lot").

How Many Hands to Send Before a Session

More is not always better. Most coaches prefer quality over quantity for session prep.

A good target: 5–8 hands per coaching session, selected for variety. Send hands where you genuinely did not know the right play — not just bad-beat stories or hands where you already know you messed up.

Pick hands from different spots:

• A preflop decision where you were unsure (cold-call or 3-bet?)
• A postflop sizing decision (bet big or small on a wet board?)
• A river decision where you tanked (hero-call or fold?)
• A hand where you think you played well but want confirmation
• A hand from a stage of the tournament you find difficult (bubble play, final table with short stacks)

If your coach has the hands in an importable format, they can also run database filters across your full session — not just the hands you cherry-picked. That is where coaches find leaks you did not even know you had.

When to Send Them

Do not wait until five minutes before your session. Your coach needs prep time too.

The standard: send hands at least 24 hours before your scheduled session. This gives your coach time to load the hands, review the action, run them through analysis software, and come to the session with specific observations instead of reacting in real time.

If you had a session last night and coaching is tomorrow, send what you have as soon as possible and let your coach know more may follow. Something is better than nothing, and most coaches would rather have hands early with a "more coming" note than get everything at the last minute.

The Submission That Wastes Your Money

Here is what a wasted coaching dollar looks like:

You send your coach three hands via text message the morning of your session. Two of them are missing stack sizes. One does not include the preflop action. Your coach spends the first fifteen minutes just getting the hands straight. You get forty-five minutes of actual coaching out of a sixty-minute session.

Now multiply that across a month of sessions. You are losing 25% of your coaching value to a submission problem.

The fix is not complicated. Capture the data at the table — while you still remember it. Send it in a format your coach can actually use. Give them enough lead time to prepare. Those three things turn a good coaching session into a great one.

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Get more value from every coaching session. LiveHands helps you capture every action, street by street, then share real hand histories with your coach for easier import into the tools they already use. Try it free for 7 days.