Hello Poker Friends!
If you've been around the poker world a while, you might remember PokerXFactor. Back during the original online-poker boom, we were at the forefront of training — our pros like Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy and Eric "Sheets" Haber were running exploitative strategies long before "exploitative" was a buzzword. But a lot of you remember us for something else: the original PXF hand history replayer — the first of its kind. Drop in a hand, watch it play back, and actually see what happened. That replayer is what grew into the PXF Analyzer, with all the stats that became cutting-edge HUD displays. Ah, the good ole days.
Today we're relaunching the PXF Hand History Analyzer with a twist. We're here to have fun — and what's more fun than beating your friends at poker?
Our 2026 focus
Here's what got me building again. We all love watching the great pros do their thing, but most of the people reading this aren't professionals. We play our friends — the same crew, every week or every month, at home or online. My own home game moved online during the pandemic: it started on PokerStars, then moved to PokerNow, which was a lot friendlier to my friends scattered across the country.
PokerNow is everywhere these days, and we think it's a great program — most of our group are PokerNow Plus members. That home game evolved fast: No-Limit Hold'em to Pot-Limit Omaha to today's rotation of everything — NLH, PLO, PLO8, PLO Hi-Lo, PLO5, and PLO5 Hi-Lo. We rotate hosts, and a few degenerates even spread the 7-2 game. There is plenty of gamble in this group. Trust me when I say it's a wild, stupid game — and a whole lot of fun.
As the game evolved past my solid NLH knowledge, my results went wildly up and down. Our group loves to see a flop, and that pulled me into lazy, limpy, calling-station poker. I'd share my VPIP with you, but honestly, it's a crime against the poker gods.
So the real question for me today isn't "how do I beat an anonymous online pool of poker players?" (Not that I don't still try from time to time.) It's: "how do I beat these knuckleheads I play every week — so I can roast them on the Zoom call while I do it?"
That's what the new PXF Analyzer is for. It's working for me so far (don't tell my group). It's dead simple — export your PokerNow hand history, drop it into your PXF Dashboard, and:
- Replay every hand at a real felt, with the live equity right on the table — and the arcade bust animations when somebody blows up.
- See what everyone actually had — every showdown plays back with the cards face-up, so you finally catch who chased, who only stacks off with the nuts, and who turned a busted draw into a bluff.
- Get the honest read on your own game — your real VPIP, PFR, 3-bet and aggression, session over session, with your net, your win rate, and your costliest leaks.
- Keep a Bad Beats scoreboard — the brutal ones you took and the ones you dished out. We keep score.
- Settle up in seconds with the free PokerNow Payout Calculator — who owes who, in the fewest payments.
- Send a Game Recap email your whole table will actually open the next morning.
And yeah — it's still poker, so we lean into the fun. Busts rattle and blow up; big wins rain gold PXF coins. That's me (mindwise) stacking off three ways on one hand up there. It happens. The point is you get to see it, laugh about it, and find the leak before next week.
One honest note
PXF is built for cash games right now — your weekly PokerNow ring game, NLH or PLO / PLO5 / PLO8 — and it runs on a free PokerNow account, no Plus required. Tournaments (MTTs) aren't fully baked yet; the structures and payouts work differently, so hold off dropping tourney histories in for now. Proper MTT support is on the list — I'd rather tell you straight than let a number quietly lie to you.
It's free to start, no credit card. And the PXF Classic videos are still part of the family — we're not filming new ones right now, but we'll keep posting gems from the archive in the Training Center. We've got a lot of hours to put back online, and I appreciate every email asking for them. It's on the list.
The heart of PXF now is right here: turning the games you already play into a real edge. This is still a small crew building in public, with a deep pipeline already in testing. We'll try things, keep what works, and not take ourselves too seriously. Drop your next game into PXF, see what you've been missing about the people you play — then tell me what to build next.
— mindwise