Originally Posted by VBAces
As you play more, you are going to have to learn to recall more details about a hand. Not because this will make it better to get advice (which is will) but because these details will be critical to your understanding of the hand, WHILE you are in the hand.
Things to pay attention to and remember:
Position. What is your position and what are the positions of the other players.
Bet sequences. You don't remember if you limped or raised. You MUST remember if you limped or raised. Although, to be fair, you should never be limping until you have enough experience to know when that might be decent strategy (some people would say never, but that is a different topic).
Imagine in this hand, you limped UTG, someone else limped and the button raised. Or, you raised, everyone folded to the BB, and the BB 3-bets. These are very different situations. In the first, the button could be doing this with a wide range of hands, In the second, the BB has a much stronger range, because he is 3-betting an early position raiser. He is not likely to be doing this with a marginal hand.
Stack sizes: This is particularly true in tournaments, but also true in cash games. If someone bets half of their stack as a continuation bet, this is different from betting one tenth of their stack. People rarely commit a large portion of their stack unless they are committed to the pot.
The Pot Size: It is meaningless to say that someone bet 8BB on the flop if you don't know how much is in the pot. 8BB could be a large bet and it could be a small bet. Pay attention to the percentage of the pot that is bet, not the number of BB.
Player tendencies: Does the preflop raiser tend to fire once on the flop, then give up if he is called? Does he only fire multiple bullets when he has a monster, or is he capable of firing multiple times with marginal hands? What about other people in the hand - how do they react to continuation bets, etc.
Probabilities: What is the probability that you will improve your hand, and what is the probability that this will make your hand a winner? You can't know the latter part exactly, but you can make a pretty good guess about the first part. How much do you stand to win if you improve and how much are risking to win that amount.
Here is what you DON'T need to focus on: What happened in the hand. It doesn't matter that the river was a 3 and gave you trips (not a set). Not only didn't you know that would happen but the probability of it happening was very low. That goes back to the previous point - if what you really want is a 3, you should know the probability of that happening.
Also A3 offsuit is a dangerous hand, and should be folded in early position, and definitely you should not be calling 3-bets with it, or limping with it. Find some starting hand charts and figure out which hands to just get rid of, and then don't worry about the results of the hand. If it turns out you would have had a winner, big deal - that happens to all of us on a regular basis. Once you start only playing good hands, you will find that the postflop decisions get easier.