Most players review hands the same way. They post the hand in a group chat, get three different opinions, and go with the one they like best.
The serious option is a solver. But that means building a tree, setting ranges, and waiting for it to run, and very few recreational players will do that for every hand that bugs them.
PeakGTO, the GTO trainer from PokerCoaching, now sits somewhere in between. Players can upload their own hand histories and get every decision scored against the solver. Free accounts get five hands a month, and paid members can upload as many as they like.
And once they know where they stand, they can challenge a friend to a Duel and find out who actually plays better.
Upload hands from eight sites
Hand history upload works with PokerStars, GGPoker, ACR, CoinPoker, iPoker, Winamax, Ignition and 888poker.
That covers the biggest global rooms, the main US-facing sites in ACR and Ignition, and the European networks through Winamax and iPoker. For most online players, at least one of their sites is on the list.
PeakGTO already had a library of solved spots, and players could filter it to find something close to a hand they’d played. The difference now is that nobody has to go looking. Upload the file, and each hand is matched to a solve automatically.
See what each decision cost
For every hand it can match, PeakGTO shows how accurate the decisions were, how much EV was lost in that hand, and the total across the upload.
Hands open in a Replayer that steps through them street by street. Next to each decision, there’s a “Show solver strategy” button that shows how the solver plays that exact spot.
That’s more useful than a solver chart on its own. A chart tells you the right play. An EV loss number tells you how much your actual play cost, which is how you decide which leaks are worth fixing first.
Know where it stops
Upload is No-limit Hold’em only, and a hand has to fit one of these formats.
- Cash. 6-handed 100 bb (NL100 rake), 8-handed 100 and 200 bb, heads-up 100 and 200 bb, and 8-handed straddle 200 bb
- Tournaments. 8-handed and heads-up, with a 12.5% ante or a 1 bb big blind ante
Stacks only match if they’re within 15% of a solved depth, and some depths are preflop-only. ICM spots and multiway postflop pots aren’t supported.
That’s a real limit for tournament players. ICM drives many of the decisions that decide a tournament, around the bubble and at final tables, and those hands won’t be graded. Multiway pots are common at lower stakes cash tables too.
To PeakGTO’s credit, it doesn’t force a bad match. Each hand shows either the solve it was matched to or the reason it couldn’t be analyzed, so nobody gets a confident answer to the wrong question.
Challenge a friend to a Duel
Duels arrived in September as part of PeakGTO’s Progress Tracking update, and they pair naturally with hand upload.
You can challenge a friend directly or send a link to anyone with a PeakGTO account. Both players face the same hands, and whoever has the lower total EV loss wins.
That’s what makes it work. In a normal heads-up match, the better player can lose for an hour because the cards didn’t cooperate. Here the cards don’t matter. You can lose every pot and still win the Duel, because your decisions were closer to the solver.
It’s also the cleanest way to settle the group chat argument. Instead of debating who’s right about a hand, play the same spots and let the EV loss decide.
Free accounts can play unlimited preflop Duels and five postflop hands. Paid members get unlimited postflop Duels too.
For players who want more than one opponent, PeakGTO also runs scheduled bracket tournaments built on the same format.
Who it’s for
Cash players at 6-max and 8-handed tables will get the most out of hand upload, since the most common formats are covered. Tournament players will find it useful for early and middle stage hands, but they’ll still need other tools once ICM comes into play.
Five free hands a month is enough to check the big pots that keep bugging you. Anyone who wants to review full sessions will need a paid membership.
Duels are the easier sell. Preflop Duels are unlimited on a free account, they’re quick, and they reward decision quality over luck, which is rare in anything competitive in poker. Anyone with a study partner or a poker group chat has a reason to try them.
Hand history upload and Duels are both live now in PeakGTO, and you can try both on a free account. Try PeakGTO now.
