Getting started with GrindLab
Create your account, understand the plans and find your way around the interface. Five minutes to be up and running.
GrindLab is a poker study tool that runs in your browser. No install, no setup: open a page, sign in, start analyzing.
This chapter covers the bare minimum to get going. If you want the philosophy first, it fits in one sentence: GrindLab does not look for the GTO play, it looks for the most profitable play against the specific opponent in front of you.
Create your account
Go to grindlab.gg and click "Analyze for free". You sign in with your Google or Discord account: no form, no password to remember, no verification email.
Free or Grinder?
The Free plan is free and needs no credit card. It gives you:
- preflop and flop equity, unlimited
- the Hand of the Day: every day, one full spot with all Grinder features unlocked
- up to 5 ranges in your library
- your 6 most recent analyses, clickable in History
The Grinder plan unlocks the rest: the full Lab with verdict and sizing analysis, unlimited postflop simulations, unlimited ranges, hand history import, unlimited history, session replays and sharing.
The sane way to choose: run the Free plan for a week, doing the Hand of the Day plus two or three preflop analyses. If you keep wanting to go further every day, Grinder is worth it. If not, stay on Free, it never expires.
Finding your way around
Once signed in, the main navigation gives you every tool:
- Dashboard: your entry point, with the Hand of the Day, your ranges and recent analyses
- Lab: analyzing a single hand, street by street
- Ranges: the editor for building and organizing your ranges
- My Hands: your imported hand histories
- History: your saved analyses
Each tool is a standalone page. You can switch between them at any time without losing your work, and everything syncs across your devices.
On mobile too
GrindLab runs in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, on desktop, tablet and phone. In practice that means you can review a hand on your commute or between two levels of a tournament. It is one of the reasons the tool stayed in the browser instead of becoming software you install.
The desktop tracker is a companion, not a prerequisite: it exists to import your hands automatically and drive a HUD, but everything else in this guide works without it.
What is next
The next chapter, the Lab, is the heart of the tool. If you only read one chapter, read that one.