Instant replay has shown it's importance in major sports over the last few years. The NFL has adopted Coaches Challenges, NHL for goal line reviews, even last years World Series had baseball fans questioning how much review should be used in the game.

Poker has an entirely different use for replays. As discussed previously, 888 has now added the ability to save your hand histories to your computer (a hand history is a detailed description of a hand or session played). This is easily done by choosing SETTINGS in your lobby, selecting HAND HISTORY, and simply checking the box and choosing a pathway to save on your hard drive.

Hand histories are essential for post-game analysis. For a long term winning player, going over his or her game with a fresh mind and fresh set of eyes is the absolute best way to plug any leaks, big or small. However, it is often very difficult to identify the mistakes we are making, since afterall, they are our mistakes in the first place.

Fortunately, this is an easy problem to solve! Have someone else find the leaks for you. There are no shortages of poker communities for todays online players. The 888 forums are a perfect place to look for a helping hand when it comes to analyzing gameplay.

So you've taken the first step and saved your hand histories so that they can be scrutanized. You've taken the second step and joined a forum so that others can offer an objective opinion of your play. The next step is to make it as easy as possible for these people to help you.

If you're simply asking for advice about 1 hand, than posting the hand history should be enough. Remember to leave out the results of the hand when posting a hand history. When you include the results, the answers and feedback you receive about the hand will be biased.

If however you are asking for advice about an entire tournament, posting the entire hand history is far too dense for anyone to comb through looking for leaks. For example, the previous Sunday Challenge took approximately 500 hands to reach the final table. If you were to go on and win this game, you would be asking someone to observe 600 hands - which is alot of work.

To make this easier, there are a variety of sites offering Hand Replayers. Here, you can simply upload the tournament file which you've saved to the computer, and the program will replay the entire tournament for you. Often including additional features such as fast forward etc.

By taking advantage of tools such as these, you make it easier for others to help you, and are that much closer to continued success.

While there many hand replayers available, few are yet compatible with 888 hand histories. Clicking HERE will take you to a replayer that does support 888 hand histories.