Thank you for all you "how to" videos. They are so well organized and presented. It is so hard to learn from a talking head without screen shots. You include every step and before and after screen shots! Thank you so much!

Thank you for sharing all your DNA knowledge with us. I always find it helpful and love your webinars. Thanks again!

Thank you. I love how your mind works! If only I had the numbers you are working with. I am in Australia with mainly British forebears, so i am slowly plotting the cluster groups together. My good DNA matches are the ones that emigrated to USA and Canada and especially those who have LDS as their religion, they seem to be the group I am matching with the most.

Thanks for this tutorial. Your sharing of knowledge and processes are so helpful.

This process works. It helped me find additional cousins in the 3rd to 4th cousin range, and to research the common ancestors of all of us. It has lead to "brick walls" that will fall if I devote some time to deep research. It also leads to clusters of people for whom I have few close relations among close cousins.

Thank-you, this was very clear and helpful. I have already clustered my groups slightly differently but your approach is interesting.

I manage over 20 kits between 4 generations for 6 people on 5 sites. This is going to be 100% helpful. I have color-coded me, my sister, and my son, during this process; however, I did not look at the matches. *I will go to each of our accounts and do that one by one.* I already know that some of us bring people in that others do not. I will be able to create a list and take that list to each of the other sites to locate more matches that will go into these subgroups. Super excited. Thank you!

Thanks for sharing and teaching tips! This is awesome.

Thank you so much! I was stuck at the initial cluster grouping stage and didn't know where to go from there.

Thanks for this Started my ancestry dna two weeks ago I had started sub grouping just like this. I wondered if it was going to be helpful and now I know it will be

This information is brilliant, I watch Christa Cowen and I don't think she has one that covers this - because I have been doing matches that hard way. I'm now going to check for videos on where you put your "built trees from sub lists" - as I have several trees relevant to individuals who have very small trees (3 or 4 people) or who have quite a lot but they are all deemed private so it's hard to work with, especially when they are not in the UK. Found this video very useful - thank you :-)

First filter your matches by common ancestor hints. Add the common ancestors to your notes field for that match. The CA will now appear when you bring up shared matches. Create groups for the CA and add the shared match to the group if two or more CAs appear. Remember you are working with hints. They are very good hints when multiple shared matches agree on a CA. Then enter the CA(s) to the match you are working with.

This was an AWESOME tutorial.

Thank you a clean understanding how to approach shared matches

Wish I had that many in common match’s to work with! Great tips! You come as a match for my match, we could be related.

Am using 1st cousin for first cluster of Shared Matches....down to 25cMs and already have almost 850 matches. Looking for GGGrandmotner. Thinking I'll find connection in lower cMs. Love this video and have now ordered B.Bettinger's new book. Hope my wrist holds out!!

Funny I figured this out before viewing this already, but good to know I am on the right track

Thanks! Very helpful!

I just subscribed to your KZfaq channel! You offer so much helpful information! Thank you! I'm wondering if this method is essentially the same thing as the clustering report one can generate through Genetic Affairs?

Very interesting. Thank you.

I'm having fun doing this, even tho I have 748 vs your 150. My problem is in wanting to go lower than 20 cM for matches. I have some saved from before Ancestor took away everything under 8 cMs. Would love to incorporate these saves, but can't find a way - and don't want to put them in the wrong group (not being 100% certain that I have them grouped correctly, to begin with). BTW - thanks for ALL you do and share.

Wish I had known to omit close family members at beginning. I was following your actions along with the video

LOVE this

So you've used 12 of the possible 24 custom groups doing initial organisation on one branch of your family tree. What do you do when you want to investigate another branch? Delete all groups and start again?

I have over 130K of matches. Does this method work well with that many matches. I have several branches that stop at the 3rd great-grandparents and one at 2nd great-grandmother. I have watched the vid 2 twice and think I understand. I went in right off the bat and started putting Ancestors in family groups and marked them with the colored groups. Now I have only one spot open. Blaine any help to this DNA dummy would be appreciated. All the vids I watch never have the amount of matches as I seem to have.

Blain, here is a question about the effects of a pairing between first cousins. My spouse has a marriage between first cousins a couple of generations back. After several miscarriages, we had our DNA tested and my spouses came back with a balanced translocation between chromosome 6 and 16 (non-standard karyotype: 46,XX,t(6;16) (q21;q23)). The interchanged pieces involve portions of the long arm of both chromosomes. The same number of SNPs are present, just some are moved to another chromosome. A sibling also has his translocation. We were fortunate to have a child who was tested and has a standard karyotype. The questions are: How do the different Autosomal DNA testing companies (Ancestry, 23andMe, etc.) handle the translocation when they process a DNA sample? How does this affect the DNA Matching results? Thank you.

I've been practicing with my own family. Is this process in print somewhere? I tried making notes but I still get lost. Hoping to figure it all out & finally get a mystery person solved.

Hi--thanks for this! My issue is that I have assigned colors to lines in my tree already and ancestry only gives you 24 colors to use. I don't have enough left over to do this unless I reassign people already color tagged, or throw out the color tags I've used. Is there a work around?

Great videos! I really enjoy it. Do you have one that shows raw data from the dna co.s . I was trying to understand how are the sequence matches done from the data to parents, siblings, cousins, etc. I mean do they take the field that shows the AT GC etc. And make a long strand pair - one of the 1st letter and another of the 2nd letter in each chromosome and then look for parts of it that matches the same chromosome in another person's data. Does it have to be the same chromosome. It wd be good to see how mom/dad matches share 50%, or the percentage match in sibling/cousin/etc. Do you know how this works. Love to hear back or in a video. Cheers and thanks for all the stuffs u r doing.

This is great. However, I don't have the all matches option while in groups. ??

When do we get the video for endogamy & multiple 1st cousin marriages?

It seems to me that the methodology proposed by Diahan Southard is easier and makes more sense than the method you advocate for clustering.

I'm trying to find common ancestors of a great-grandfather. I've started this process by finding matches between myself and a second cousin once removed. However, I have several second cousins related through the same great-grandfather, and they show up at the top of the list of matches with the my first matched second cousin once removed. Should I exclude these other second cousins once removed when I start making subgroups? It seems like they will muddy the water.

Unfortunately, I can't hear your video...is there somewhere else I can obtain this information. Thank you.

I am trying to get my head around this. I haven't a cousin, but I have a niece. Will this skew results, being off by a generation?

I am trying to find my paternal grandparents. I know my paternal GG possibly 2GG (haven't figured that out yet) a) does this help with narrowing down grandparents and if not is there a method that would? b) how far down should I start? So far my closest match is 567 cM and I know who our GG possibly 2GG are.

Blaine (or anyone), I'm stumped. When it comes to the 1st Sub-group (and any subsequent sub-groups), the option 1 and option 2, you choose to go with option 2. I'm not clear regarding the difference in the results between the two options. I can see from already trying that the lists are different, but I'm not clear which option is truly more helpful. If this could be fleshed out a bit more, I would be appreciative.

Any tips if you suspect multiple common ancestors?

If you have 2 shared matches, and you know one to be the child of the other, do you treat the child as you would a close relative and just leave him or her out of the subgroup?

I also have an Unknown #3 just as in your tree. Did you identify your #3? If so, how did you do it?

Keep crushing it. Nice work.

Thanks for this. Although because both my parrents are only children this didn't work as well as I was expecting.

Thanks!

Working on a paternal line (maternal line is known) but will this process work for a half cousin who is top match on paternal line?

Would it be a similar effect to just star all the matches for the highest ICW match and run an Autocluster on geneticaffairs using only the starred matches?

Question: How close is too close for a match to be useful? I have two H1C matches that are from a known line. The first (closest match) has 497 shared matches. I started to mark them, but before I spend the next several hours going through them, I wanted to see if they are mostly shared with the second H1C. It's about 1/2 and 1/2 shared matches. Should I be marking these matches as a subgroup even though I know these two cousins are descended from the same grandparents? Or should I just skip them altogether and go to a more distant match?

The + Add/edit groups is not immediately available. click EXTRAS at the top and then choose Ancestry lab. On this page select enhanced matching on? otherwise, you will be pulling your hair out like I did

How can you do this with just your account? If you don't have access to other people's accounts?

Have you refined your process for FTDNA and MH matches? If so, could you share?

Perhaps someone could clarify please - does this method only work if you manage more than 1 kit?

My issue with this is that I already have many of my colors taken. For my specific matches I have tested my all four of my grand parents so I am almost immediately able to tell what quarter branch, and with my grandmothers, what eighth branch. Because of that I don't have many colors left and I am not certain how to best utilize them. Do you have suggestions on that?

Awesome

What clustering sharing?

Has Ancestry changed their format? I don't see the All Matches tab shown by Blaine Bettinger at 11:33 in this video. What am I missing?

I have too many groups. Is there any way to download this information .csv, .txt, whatever so I can put it into an Excel document? Then I can cluster better.

I’d love to understand this but I’m completely lost.

This information was so helpful. My question is what ancestor should you choose to start with, ie should it be a first cousin, second cousin, third cousin? I was fortunate to find about 20 cousins of various degrees through Ancestry DNA, we are all descended from six brothers that are mostly our great grandfathers. We are trying to break through that wall to confirm our great great grandfather and find our third great grandfather. Thank you so much for this information, I can’t wait to pass it along to my Armstrong family to start this process...

I'm cleaning up previous attempts at clustering by now using your method. I now have an old empty group name, and I can't find any way to delete it. Any suggestions?

Blaine, I love your work! I think this will be useful to find my unknown maternal grandfather. I have my paternal grandmother tested, and my paternal grandfather's half brother, so I can exclude all of those matches. On my mother's side I have her half sister tested, so can exclude any of these shared matches. As I'm in Australia, this honestly leaves me with 12 matches that don't match any of these known family members' kits, and I suspect some of these 12 also match one of my 3 known grandparents, they just haven't replied to my message, nor have a tree with any information. I know it's a waiting game until one of these people reply, but with such a low number of possible matches to my mystery grandad, could this imply endogamy? I do know he had Huntington's Disease, so if he didn't have any siblings without Huntington's Disease, I'm potentially looking for a low cM match aren't I? PS - I'm looking forward to seeing you in Brisbane at the DNA Down Under roadshow! #DNADownunder

Hello, I am trying to follow along using the Ancestry matches that I have already started sorting into color coded groups. I may have started off wrong here though - When you start with two cousins, I assumed that one of the cousins was going to be you, ie, the DNA tester. And I realize after trying to do this, I may have been mistaken in this assumption. Who are the cousins that you start with?

Blaine, You need to keep it as simple as possible.

Strange I checked for shared matches and there are none. I know one pair is a mother daughter, so they should be shared. 23andme works great for this, Ancestry not so much.

Thank you Thank you i was about to make excell sheet

Hee hee sub-gloops :)

I must be the dumb kid in this class....... if I have 136 with my first my first match and go all the matches would i not need 139 colors?? I know that is not the right answer, but I remain completely and utterly confused. H E L P :-)

Sorry Blaine but you could have described that in 60 seconds. Too tedious for me to get more than half way.

Can you use this to find unknown father?

Blaine Bettinger needs to quit muddling his hapless brain and trace trees.