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Introduction

With your Texas Grab'em Hand Recorder it is possible, to copy/paste hands live while you are playing at partypoker into Texas Grab'em. You will get a detailed overview about your selected hands also it allows you to paste Hands quickly into a board for detailed discussions. Very interesting hands can be combined into a project.

The Texas Grab'em Hand Recorder converts the Hand Histories from PartyPoker into an easy to read forat which you can also use for the exchange with other Player or for the discussion in boards like PokerStrategy.cc.

As an additional feature Texas Grab'em allows you to paste complete Hand History files to analyse old game/sessions

About the program

Texas Grab'em was produced in cooperation with PokerStrategy.cc and is Freeware.

That means you can spread this tool, as long as no changes are made (especially not copyright rights violated).

Version History

  • 2007/02/06: announcement of the first version

Quickstart

Texas Grab'em is a tool to enable players to capture hands while they are playing. They can do so by pressing a simple key and then later on copy the most interesting hands for analysis to the discussion boards at PokerStrategy.cc.

1. Settings

After the installation of Texas Grab'em you can immediately start the application and will be taken to the program's settings dialog:

  

Enter your PartyPoker screenname as well as the path to your saved hand histories. Furthermore, you can specify which key should trigger the capturing of hands while you are playing.

Confirm your settings by clicking OK and you will be taken to the main view of the Texas Grab'em tool.

 2. Capturing Hands

While you are playing at a PartyPoker table - assuming that Texas Grab'em is still running - you can capture interesting hands by tapping the shortcut key defined earlier. Do so right after the hand is finished and the next hand is dealt. The last hand will then be copied to the Texas Grab'em hands list.

3. Discussing Hands

In order to discuss a captured hand on the PokerStrategy.cc boards, click on that particular hand in the left hand list. You will now see a representation of this hand in the output panel.

Beneath this panel you will find the button "PokerStrategy Format", which will copy the hand to you computer's clipboard. Continue by clicking the "Go To Board" button and you will be taken to the PokerStrategy.cc boards where you can post your hand.

4. Further Options

For an overview of all the other exiting features Texas Grab'em has to offer, please take a look at the online manual.

Manual 

Record Hands

Often you are facing tough decisions while playing and you wan't to take a look at the hand later on. Especially in the heat of the battle you can't/shouldn't do the analyse while still playing, but it will be hard to find exactly his hand history you just played later.

This is where Texas Grab'em shines. You can select a key-kombination, that will copy the current hand into the hand history list of Texas Grab'em Now you can continue playing and after you stopped your session you can have a look at all your hands saved and analyse them.

Important: Before you can start to use Texas Grab'em you have to edit the settings so the program will work on your computer. In the general settings you can also choose the key kombination you want to use to copy/paste a hand history into your Texas Grab'em directory.

Load Hand Histories

The function to load special Hand Histories allows the later analysis of bigger poker sessions, who are available for example at the partyPoker directory. The list of all Hands of the special file are loaded into the hand list of Texas Grab'em. FOr each hand Hero will be the player who got hole cards in the hand history.

Paste Hands from Clipboard

With this button you have the possibility to paste hands from your computers clipboard to Texas Grab'em.

For example if you are exchanging handhistories via MSN/ICQ you can just copy the Hand History and paste it with this button into your Texas Grab'em.

Working with projects

A Project at Texas Grab'em is a collection of Hand Histories, that is produced by pasting directly while playing, pasting from clipboad or opening a saved Hand History file. Of course you can edit every Hand with Stats and comments.

With the help of the links in this program you can naviagte within the hands and the different players. Also you can delete not so interesting hands.

Closed Projects - and of course open projects - can be saved as a special Texas Grab'em format (.tgf). This file contains all changes you made. Also you can easily share these projects with friends also using Texas Grab'em

Marked Hands

Often, while working on a certain project you will find hands that you would like to take a closer look at, later on. To do that, just select the special hand and press the right mouse button and select Mark Hand. Marked hands are displayed in a different colour and are easy to find. Press on the same hand with the right mouse button and select Mark Hand to demark the hand.

A collection of marked hands can be made by using "Save Marked Hands as" so you can export them in an own project.

Export Hands

One of the best things you can do is the discussion about played hands with other poker players, especially in the boards of Pokerstrategy.cc where proffessional hand evaluators are judging your hand. To quickly post a hand into a thread use one of the two buttons: Pokerstrategy Format or Forum Format.

By pressing one of these buttons the hand is copied into the clipboard of your computer. Now you can easily paste the hand into a thread/board post with the key-combination CTRL+V.

Important: Please watch out that the board format of Pokerstrategy.cc and common ubb boards differ a lot and allow different display possibilities.

Layout

The main view of the program contains the list of all opened Hands in the left column, as the detailed view of a Hand selected, in the right window.

The menu, toolbar and the elements at the bottom, are tools to let you edit the outlook of your hand history. Get more information about these tools in the current help areas.

Output

The output area Texas Grab'em contains the selected HandHistory in an editable format. This format is the typical format how Hand Historys are displayed in the internet.

Compared to other Hand Recorder with Texas Grab'em you have a lot of more options, described in the following.

Comments about different phases of the hand

Texas Grab'em differentiates between the following phases Allgemein, Preflop, Flop, Turn, River and Ende. FOr each of these phases you enter a different text, which will be desplayed within the Hand History-output, like you can see on the Screenshot above. The advantage is quite clear. You can enter comments to every decision you have to make and of course an opnening and closing comment. This is a big advantage for the typical hand discussions for the internet boards.

How to "comment a phase": just click on the Comment-Link of the phase you want to edit. You can now enter a text into the edit-field and your text will be shown directly in the output area.

Show and Hide known players

For an exact analysis of a Hand it is helpfull if you have stats (Stats) about your opponents, which had an active part in the hand. But in general only the stats from a few players are interesting. In the area Known Players you can select the players which are interesting for this special hand, and their stats and stack will be displayed in an clearly arranged format. The stats are arranged in the typical PokerTracker order.

Of course you can also delete players out of the hand by just pressing the (x) behind his name.

Hint: Links like Kommentieren or (x) are of course not shown when you paste your hand into a sample board.

Menu

By means of the menu you have almost the same options like you have with the toolbar.

File-Menu
  • New: Delets the list of running projects and you can start a new project.
  • Open: Opens a previous saved project.
  • Open Hand HistoryYou can open a Hand History file, saved on your PC, like the ones from PartyPoker
  • Paste Hand History from Clipboard: When you copied one or more HH's into the PC's clipboard you can enter them into your current project by just pressing this button
  • Save: Saves the current project. You have to enter a project name if you didn't do that before.
  • Save as: Saves the current project with a new name and under a new path if you want to.
  • Save Marked Hands as: Only saves marked hands into a project.
  • Close: Closes the program.
Edit Menu
  • Copy PokerStrategy Format into Clipboard: Copies the current displayed hand into a compatible format for Pokerstrategy board. You can paste the hand with the key combination CTRL+V.
  • Copy Forum Format into Clipboard: Copies the current displayed hand into a compatible format for any ubb board. You can paste the hand with the key combination CTRL+V.
Tools-Menu
  • Cache Player Data: If this point is activated, Player Stats are read only one time and are transfered into the PC's cache. THe program can access these players stats now much quicker. While live games this option should be deactivated because unknown players will remain at this status although you get more information/stats about them while playing.
  • Check for updates: Checks if there are any updates available for Texas Grab'em. Important: It could be that you have to allow Texas Grab'em at your Firewall settings to enter the internet
  • Auto-Check for updates: Checks after every program start if there are updates availabe for Texas Grab'em.
  • Language: Allows you to select another language for Texas Grab'em. Notice that this has no influence on the displayed hands, which are always displayed in english.
Help-Menu
  • Show Help: Shows this help.
  • About Texas Grab'em: Shows general information about this software.

Toolbar

Via the Toolbar you can make the same operations like wihtin the menue but the Toolbar is easier accessible. The different functions from left to right:

  • New: Delets the list of running projects and you can start a new project.
  • Open: Opens a previous saved project.
  • Save: Saves the current project. You have to enter a project name if you didn't do that before.
  • Save as: Saves the current project with a new name and under a new path if you want to.
  • Paste Hand History from Clipboard: When you copied one or more HH's into the PC's clipboard you can enter them into your current project by just pressing this button
  • Open Hand HistoryYou can open a Hand History file, saved on your PC, like the ones from PartyPoker
  • Database: Opens the window to customize your database settings.
  • Settings: Opens the window to customize your general settings.
  • Show Help: Shows the help you are just seeing.
  • About Texas Grab'em: shows information about the program version you are using.

Controls

The control elements in the main window allow you to edit the output of the Hand or the export into a different format.

Buttons within the content group

Both buttons Pokerstrategy Format and Forum Format do copy the displayed hand into the computers clipboard. they are transfered into the necessary format for either the Pokerstrategy.cc or a UBB format. You can paste the hand with the key-combination CTRL+V into a board posting. Watch out that the Pokerstrategy.cc format offers you more possibilities displaying the hand then an ubb board.

The button Go to Board opens the hand evaluation board at Pokerstrategy.cc, where you can post your sample hands which are evaluated by professional players.

Buttons within the "View Options" group

The Stats button activates/deactivates, that stats of your opponents are displayed within the hand format.

The Stacks button activates/deactivates that the stacks of your oppoentns are displayed within the hand format.

The Results button activates/deactivates that the result of the hand is displayed within the hand format. The results are displayed in white color so that you have to mark them with your mouse to read them.

Hero in this hand

Here you can enter the name of Hero. Standard for Hero, is the player who got holecards within the Hand history.

Notes

The Note block allows you to edit/create comments for the several phases of the hand like General, Preflop, Flop, Turn, River sowie Closing Comment. The Comments are displayed within the output window.

General Settings

The window for general settings only includes a few options:

  • Player Name: Enter your PartyPoker Screen Name here. The name is used to select Hero within your Hand Histories.
  • Path to your HH Folder: Path of your hand history directory of partyPoker but without the path of your players name. In general the path is c:program filespartygamingpartypokerhandhistory.
  • Shortcut: Select the key(key combination) you want to use to copy hands into the program while playing at PartyPoker.

Database Settings

When you are using a Database with player stats, you have the possibility to display these stats within the hand history. Therefore you can use a PokerTracker, GLH, PokerManager or PokerOffice Database. As long as you are just using one database all relevant settings can be made within the Database Settings window. When you are using more then one database you should use the button Advanced Settings.

First select the database type you are using. (e.g.: PokerTracker Access or PokerTracker PostgreSQL). According to this selection you have to make different additional selections below. For example a PokerTracker Access database doesn't need a Port or Server but instead the path of the Database. Here the detailed settings:

  • Database Type: The Type of Database you can use for examle PokerTracker Access or GLH Access.
  • Server: Enter the server for the database. In general it is localhost.
  • Port: Enter the port for the database. For example you have to enter 5432 for PokerTracker PostgreSQL and 3050 for PokerManager.
  • UserName: The name of the user, who has access to the database.
  • Password: The Password for the User who has access to the database.
  • Database Name: The name of the database, in case of an access database you have to select the path instead of the real name

The button Test Database Settings allows you to make a quick check if the entered data is correct.

Advanced Database Settings

In case you want to use different databases at the same time or switch between different databases, you should setup separate COnnection and Database profiles. A database profile is a single COnnection to a database, a connection profile a collection of different databases.

Connection Profiles

Within the window for Connection profiles you can create new profiles or edit/copy existing profiles (rename or delete them). When you start Texas Grab'em for the first time it creates a Default profile, which contains a single database connection.

To read your player data Texas Grab'em uses the selected profile, which contains the list of database profiles in the list below. To edit the Database profiles use Edit Database Profiles. To run a test of your Connection Profile press Test Connection Profile.

Database Profile

The database profil window is comparable to setting up a single Database connection. In the upper area you can find the profile selector, with which you can edit old profiles or create new ones. A created profile can be tested with the Test Database profile. The other settings in detail:

  • Database Type: The Type of Database you can use for examle PokerTracker Access or GLH Access.
  • Server: Enter the server for the database. In general it is localhost.
  • Port: Enter the port for the database. For example you have to enter 5432 for PokerTracker PostgreSQL and 3050 for PokerManager.
  • User Name: The name of the user, who has access to the database.
  • Password: The Password for the User who has access to the database.
  • Database Name: The name of the database, in case of an access database you have to select the path instead of the real name
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