A useful hand review starts before the result. Preserve the situation, choose one decision, and ask what the available information actually supported.
This is a recording and study method, not a chart telling you which action to take. Use it after play. The example below is fictional and deliberately stops before the decision is resolved.
First, preserve the situation.
Write down the game, positions, blinds and antes, relevant stacks, and action in order. Record bet sizes as total amounts when a player raises. Mark an estimate as an estimate rather than making a remembered number look exact.
For a tournament hand, add any payout or stage information relevant to the question. Keep an observation such as “the player raised twice in the last orbit” separate from an interpretation such as “the player is aggressive.” Do not include another person's identifying details in a public example without permission.
Pause at one decision.
Fictional example / No-limit hold'em
Facing a flop raise
Six-handed play, no antes, and 30 big blinds effective at the start. Blinds are 0.5 and 1 big blind (BB). Everyone folds to the button.
- Before the flop
- The button raises to 2.5 BB. The small blind folds. The big blind calls. The pot is 5.5 BB: 2.5 + 2.5 + 0.5.
- On the flop
- The big blind checks. The button bets 2 BB. The big blind raises to 7 BB total.
- The decision
- The pot is now 14.5 BB: 5.5 + 2 + 7. The button faces 5 BB more to call, not 7 BB.
Stop here. There is no supplied opponent hand or eventual result. The exercise is to record the decision accurately, not to infer a solved answer from the example.
Separate the record from the interpretation.
The board, recorded stacks, and bet sizes describe the situation. The opponent's possible hands, reasons for raising, and likely later actions are interpretations. Write those in a separate paragraph, together with what would support or weaken them.
In the fictional hand, you might ask what hands the big blind could raise for value and what bluffs are plausible. That is a study question, not evidence that a particular range is correct. If you cannot justify an assumption, leave it visible as an unknown.
Compare the alternatives before choosing a verdict.
For this decision, describe what would make folding, calling, or reraising reasonable. State the assumptions each option relies on. A strong review may conclude that more than one action is defensible, or that the missing information prevents a confident judgment.
A calculation or study tool should answer a stated question under stated inputs. Record those inputs and its limits. Do not turn a rough reconstruction into an exact-looking strategy claim, or treat a tool's output as a faithful model of the hand without checking.
Keep the result in its own paragraph.
In a real review, save your best recollection of what you thought at the table before writing the later analysis. Do not rewrite that account to match what you now believe.
The outcome belongs in the record, but it does not replace the analysis. Ask whether the decision used the information available at the time and whether an avoidable omission affected it. A good outcome is not, on its own, a complete defense of the process.
Leave one useful next step.
Choose a question small enough to investigate: reconstruct the pot, check a remembered stack, compare explicit range assumptions, or review one decision with a study partner. Save the answer next to the original record rather than replacing it.
The blank sheet follows this sequence: situation, action, decision, original thinking, later review, result, and next step. Download it and open it in a text editor or notes app. In a short session, just record the situation and the unanswered question.
Editable plain text (.md), for your own private use. This is a thinking aid, not a validated assessment or a promise of improved results.
Published October 5, 2026. Prepared with AI assistance. The hand and all its numbers are fictional. No personal tournament result, solver validation, or optimal strategy is claimed.