New poker players find their way onto online forums every day and a decent percentage of them just jump right in without thinking that there may be a right way and a wrong way to go about things. So, first thing’s first. Before you ask for advice on a particular hand or situation, explore the forum with the search function. You are almost certainly not the first person to ask whatever you have to ask, so you can save yourself and others time by reading past discussions. On top of that, you can avoid the embarrassment of people possibly scolding you for not searching first as they present you with links to a few existing threads about your exact topic.
Once you determine that your issue is worth posting, you need to present the poker community with complete information. The first thing everyone sees is your subject line, so make it descriptive. Subjects like “Help” or “River Trouble” just don’t cut it. Give readers a one-line summary of your post in the subject line so that the people who are truly interested in helping will read your message.
Something like “10NL – flop TPTK in MP and 2 LAGs bet” is perfect. Here, you’ve given everyone the stakes you are playing so that they have a general idea of the skill level of the table, your position, hand strength, and dilemma. That’s plenty of information to get people’s minds churning before they even read your post. Those who have advice will read it and those who can’t help won’t.
In the message itself, post the hand history so that everyone can see exactly how the hand went down. This will also allow people to visualize the table and use other information such as stack sizes to formulate an answer. Whenever possible, use a hand converter to make the hand history more readable – you can find them around the internet or the message board may have a converter available. If you can’t do that, at least make sure you take the time to format it so it is easy to read.
One note, though: do not include portions of the hand that occur after your decision point, as you want the readers to put themselves in your shoes at the spot in the hand where you need advice. If you reveal the results or what cards your opponents had, you will likely influence people’s feedback.
If you have any other information that may be of use, but is not obvious in the hand history, include it. This could include your read on your opponent during the session, what you think your image has been, and if there have been any significant hands recently that may affect how your opponent is playing this one. If you have statistics on your adversary from software such as PokerTracker, include those along with how many hands you have on them. Essentially, the more complete a picture you can provide for everybody, the better advice you will receive. But again, don’t include too much – just give the straight, unemotional facts up to the decision point in the hand.
After all is said and done, you will hopefully receive a slew of replies, some helpful, some not. No matter what, perhaps the most important piece of advice we can give is to accept any criticism and advice people offer. You are posting a question on a message board for a reason, so don’t get offended if some people don’t think you played the hand well or just generally have different opinions. You aren’t looking for confirmation that you were right or your opponent was a fish; you are looking for advice. Take what you are given, digest it, and use it to improve your game.
