KEY TAKEAWAYS
A poker hand write-up is a short, ordered record of one hand: who held what, what each player did, and how the pot grew. Written well, it lets a reader rebuild the hand and check every number. Written badly, it leaves out a stack size or an action size and nobody can say what the pot was. In the example used here, a $13 preflop pot becomes $29 on the flop and $69 on the turn, and the final stacks add up to exactly the chips that started the hand.
This article explains what a complete write-up contains, shows how to track the pot as the hand is written, works through one full hand with its arithmetic, and lists the checks that catch the most common errors before the hand is shared. The hand is hypothetical, and the focus is on recording numbers, not on judging the play.
What a Complete Hand Write-Up Contains
Every shareable hand answers the same seven questions. A write-up is complete when a stranger can rebuild the hand with nothing else, and the seven items below are the minimum for that.
First comes the game: the variant, the blind levels and whether antes or a straddle exist, because those decide the starting pot. Second, the number of players and each player’s position, such as under the gun (UTG), cutoff (CO), button (BTN), small blind (SB) and big blind (BB). Third, the starting stacks, since a bet that is small against one stack is large against another.
Fourth is the action, in order, with a size attached to every bet, raise and call. Fifth is the board, written street by street, flop then turn then river. Sixth is the result: which hands were shown and who won. Seventh is any assumption, such as that rake is ignored. Leaving out any one of the seven makes at least one number unrecoverable, which is why reviewers so often ask for the missing stack or size first.
Online sites record the same information in their own layout, as described in how to read a poker hand history line by line.
How to Write a Hand Down, Step by Step
Step 1: Set the starting pot and stacks
Begin with the blinds, because they are the first money in. With blinds of $1 and $2, the pot before any action is $1 + $2 = $3. Add antes or a straddle if the game has them. Record each stack that is at risk, such as “all stacks $200”.
Step 2: Write each action with a size, and say what the size means
Choose one convention and keep it. “Raises to” gives the total bet and “raises by” gives only the increase. If the big blind is $2 and the cutoff makes it $6 in total, that is “raises to $6”, which is a raise of $4 over the blind. A call is written as the amount added, or as “calls $6” for the total, but never both in one hand.
Step 3: Update the pot after every street
The pot after a street equals the pot before it plus every chip added on that street. A bet that is called adds twice its size. Pot after the street = pot before + bet + call, so an $8 bet that is called into $13 gives 13 + 8 + 8 = $29.
Step 4: Finish with the result and the stacks
State the showdown hands and the winner, then reconcile. The final stacks must add up to the starting chips, apart from any rake, and the check is quick: the winner gains what the loser loses plus the dead money from the blinds.
Worked Example: One Hand, Fully Written Down
Suppose a six-player game with $1/$2 blinds and every stack at $200. The hand is hypothetical and rake is ignored for clarity. UTG and the hijack fold. The cutoff, holding A♥ K♥, raises to $6. The button and small blind fold. The big blind, holding 9♦ 8♣, calls. The preflop pot is $6 + $6 + $1 = $13, where the extra $1 is the small blind’s dead money.
The flop is K♠ 8♦ 3♣. The big blind checks, the cutoff bets $8, and the big blind calls, so the pot is 13 + 8 + 8 = $29. The turn is the 2♥. The big blind checks, the cutoff bets $20 and the big blind calls, so the pot is 29 + 20 + 20 = $69. The river is the 9♠. Both players check. At showdown the big blind has 9♦ 8♣, which makes two pair, nines and eights, and the cutoff has a pair of kings with an ace kicker. Two pair beats one pair, so the big blind wins the $69.
The reconciliation uses the results. The cutoff put in 6 + 8 + 20 = $34 and finishes with 200 − 34 = $166. The big blind also put in $34 and finishes with 200 − 34 + 69 = $235. The small blind finishes with $199. The three players who folded without betting hold $600 together. 235 + 166 + 199 + 600 = $1,200, which equals 6 × $200, so the record is consistent.
| Street | Board | Action | Pot after the street |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preflop | None | CO raises to $6; BB calls; others fold | $13 |
| Flop | K♠ 8♦ 3♣ | BB checks; CO bets $8; BB calls | $29 |
| Turn | 2♥ | BB checks; CO bets $20; BB calls | $69 |
| River | 9♠ | Both check | $69 |
The table is the whole hand in four rows, and each pot figure follows from the one above it, so a reader can find an error by checking the rows one at a time.
Checking the Numbers Before You Share
A good write-up supports calculations beyond the pot size. Bet sizes as a percentage of the pot come straight from the record. On the flop the cutoff bet 8 into 13, which is 8 ÷ 13 = 61.5% of the pot. On the turn the bet was 20 into 29, which is 20 ÷ 29 = 69.0%.
The same record gives the price of each call, as set out in pot odds. On the flop the big blind faced a bet of 8 into a pot of 13, so the pot after the bet was 21 and the call of 8 needed 8 ÷ (21 + 8) = 27.6% equity. On the turn the call of 20 went into 29 + 20 = 49, so it needed 20 ÷ (49 + 20) = 29.0%. These figures describe the price only, not whether a call was wise.
Before posting, run a short checklist over the written hand: every action has a size, the pot after each street matches the arithmetic, no card appears twice in the hole cards and the board, the winner’s hand is classified correctly, and the final stacks reconcile with the starting stacks. A tool such as an equity calculator can then confirm the equities, as long as the hands, board and number of players are entered exactly as written.
Common Mistakes When Writing a Hand
The most frequent error is leaving out the stack sizes. Without them, nobody can say whether a bet was small or committed the whole stack, and the stack-to-pot ratio cannot be calculated.
A second error is confusing “raises to” with “raises by”. If a write-up says “raises $6” over a $2 blind, one reader will see a total bet of $6 and another a total of $8, and every pot figure after that differs between them. State “to” or “by” each time.
Third, forgetting the dead money. The small blind’s $1 is in the pot even though that player folded, so a preflop pot of $12 instead of $13 makes every later total wrong by the same amount.
The fourth mistake is writing results that do not reconcile. If the final stacks add up to more or fewer chips than the hand began with, a number is missing or misread. A fifth mistake is listing the same card twice, such as a king of spades in a hand and on the board, which a single deck cannot produce.
Where Hand Notation Matters
Good notation matters wherever a hand is discussed with someone who was not there, such as a forum thread or a personal review file. The same few lines serve every audience.
Conventions vary. Some forums write positions in capitals, some write stack sizes in big blinds instead of dollars, and some sites mark a raise with “r” instead of “raises to”. None of these is the universal standard, so a write-up should define any shorthand it uses. Everything shown here concerns recording numbers accurately and says nothing about whether the play in a hand was correct. Poker involves real financial risk, short-term results depend heavily on luck, and the legal age and legality of real-money poker vary by state and venue.
The Next Step After Writing a Hand
A written hand is the raw material for analysis. To work through the equities of a hand street by street, see the numbers of a hand street by street. Notation comes first and analysis second, because an error in the record carries into every figure calculated from it.
