# Recording and Describing Poker Hands

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11753 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11753/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.01724/) (2017)
- [PokerKit: A Comprehensive Python Library for Fine-Grained Multi-Variant Poker Game Simulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07327/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Emergent World Beliefs: Exploring Transformers in Stochastic Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23722/) (2025)
- [SafeAdapt-Poker: Counterfactual Risk Calibration for Budgeted Adaptation under Opponent Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.20473/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces the Poker Hand History (PHH) file format, designed to standardize the recording of poker hands across different game variants. Despite poker's widespread popularity in the mainstream culture as a mind sport and its prominence in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) research as a benchmark for imperfect information AI agents, it lacks a consistent format that humans can use to document poker hands across different variants that can also easily be parsed by machines. To address this gap in the literature, we propose the PHH format which provides a concise human-readable machine-friendly representation of hand history that comprehensively captures various details of the hand, ranging from initial game parameters and actions to contextual parameters including but not limited to the venue, players, and time control information. In the supplementary, we provide 10,088 hands covering 11 different variants in the PHH format. The full specification is available on https://github.com/uoftcprg/phh-std