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Keeping Records
Are you an overall winner or a loser?
If you are anything like most poker players, your answer to that question will be something like this: ‘I probably break about even, or maybe make a small profit.’ But the vast majority of those players are deluding themselves.
Poker is a truly heartless game. Not only is your aim in poker to ruthlessly pick apart your opponents, exploit their weaknesses, and take every last penny from their wallets, but it is deceptive about its cruelness. It masquerades as fun and enjoyment. Like all the best gambling games, sometimes you might not notice that you’re losing until all your money is gone and you’re catching the bus home.
But poker doesn’t have to be like that for you. Sure, most people don’t know whether they are a long-term winner or a loser, because the very nature of the game confuses them, or their ego can’t accept that they might not be as good as they thought. But you can make a choice not to be one of those people – to be objective about your skills and your results. You take the first step by keeping records.
Why Keep Records?
If you don’t keep at least some type of records, you simply won’t know whether you’re a long term winner or not. The fluctuations inherent in the game will confuse you, and you will lose track. Take a typical losing session for example: you don’t get many good cards, so you have to fold a lot. Occasionally you raise to try and steal, but somebody reraises and you have to fold. You win a pot worth £100, but the next minute you lose one worth £101.
It’s easy to walk away from a session like this thinking ‘I broke about even’, when in truth you lost money. Consequently, you can be completely deluded about your skill as a poker player, and make some serious mistakes. Keeping records can help you avoid this problem.
Keeping records can also help you to improve your game. The first step to progressing as a player is to recognise the areas of your game that need improvement. By studying your performance objectively, you can identify those areas, and motivate yourself to improve – or you can keep track of your sessions, and figure out when and where you do best, helping you to choose more profitable games in the future.
One last, very different reason to keep records is that it helps to ease your friends and relatives’ concerns about your poker play. I’m sure many of you will have parents or partners who are concerned that poker will negatively affect your life. By keeping detailed records, you can prove how seriously you take the game, and hopefully show beyond doubt that you are a long term winner. In my experience, this does help them to understand and relax, so they can do what they’re supposed to do as your loved ones – support and encourage you.
What to Keep
Every player who is serious about poker should record certain things every time they play:
What? |
How? |
Why? |
Date |
Note the day, month and year for the session. |
Recording the date will help you to get perspective, so you can track your results by day, week, month and year. You’ll also be able to figure out which day of the week you perform best, so you can choose better games. |
Location |
Note the place that you played (eg. The Mirage casino), or site if online. |
Keeping track of the location will help you to find the places where you perform best. This will help you to choose better games in the future. |
Game and Betting Structure |
Note the game type and structure (eg. No Limit Hold’em, Limit Omaha Eight or Better) |
Keeping track of the game will help you to see what your best game really is in objective terms. Perhaps it’s not No Limit Hold’em, and you should be devoting more of your time to a different game. |
Stakes (Cash Games Only) |
Note the stakes or blinds of the game (eg. £1/£2) |
Keeping track of the stakes will help you to track your progress as you move up and down in limits. Perhaps you should move back down, or perhaps it’s time to move up? Keeping records will help you to make the decision. |
Number of Players |
Record the number of players at the table, or in the tournament. |
Keeping track of the number of players will help you to pick out your best game. Perhaps you play best at six-handed tables, or perhaps heads up play is most profitable for you. You’ll know if you keep records. |
Time Played |
Note how long you played, in hours. |
Recording how long you have played can help you to work out your hourly rate – something that is crucial to know if you’re planning on playing seriously. If you like, you can also record the time of day that you played – this can help you to work out whether you play better during the evening, in the morning, or in the afternoon for example. |
Buy In |
Note how much you bought into the game for (including all rebuys and add-ons). |
Knowing how much you have bought into a game for and how much you have cashed out helps you to work out that all-important statistic – your profit or loss for the session! For tournaments this data also allows you to calculate your Return On Investment, or ROI. |
Cash Out |
Note how much you cashed out of the game |
|
Finishing Position (Tournaments Only) |
Note your finishing position |
Knowing your finishing position is important, both for posterity, and to help you work out what your average finishing position is relative to the field. |
Type of Tournament (Tournaments Only) |
Note the type of tournament (eg. Freezeout, Rebuy) |
Recording this helps you to figure out whether you fare better in tournaments with rebuys, or tournaments without. |
Personally, I keep a simple spreadsheet which I have built up over the years, containing all of this information. It’s helped me to work out how much money I earn on average per hour from each type of game. For example, I know that in my regular small-stakes home game, I make £4.88 an hour on average. I know that Razz was my most profitable game of 2006, and I know that in 2007 I have made the most money in online tournaments. I also know for certain that I am a winning player, and I’m able to prove that to others if necessary. You can download a blank version of the spreadsheet I use here.
Other Tools
There are also other tools that you can use to keep records. Some websites provide services that you can use to upload your results, which are then stored on their server. You can create graphs and reports to help you understand and analyse your results better, for both online and offline games. Two such websites are www.cardplayer.com and www.thehendonmob.com.
For online poker players, there are some excellent tools you can use to keep records. For years, the industry standard has been Poker Tracker, a program which imports your hand histories automatically and collates them into a hugely detailed database full of useful information (such as your BB/100, a measure of your profit or loss per 100 hands, and Aggression Factor, a measure of how much you bet and raise on different streets). Poker Tracker can help you to analyse your game and that of your opponents, as well as easily keep results for your online play. Using it, you can find leaks in your game that may have gone unplugged for months, and find those in your opponents that you can exploit.
Of course Poker Tracker has it’s downsides. You can’t use it for live games, it’s support for currencies other than US dollars is weak, and the current version is getting dated (although a new improved version is on the way). But anybody who is serious about online poker should consider investing in it or one of the many alternatives (such as Holdem Manager or Poker Academy Prospector).
Conclusion
Are you an overall winner or a loser?
If you keep records, you can answer that question confidently, and have the proof to back up your claims. You’ll be able to objectively determine what you do well, and what you need to improve at – and that’s the first step to greater poker success.
So why aren’t more people doing it?
