POKER RECORD KEEPING-WHAT INFO DO YOU FIND USEFULL

[Mr Papagiorgio]

POKER RECORD KEEPING – WHAT INFO DO YOU FIND USEFULL ??


With the start of a new year comes my resolve to keep a more concise poker log. I did a good job last year by keeping track of net win/loss stored in my phone. I could tell with fairly easy effort what my previous month total was, but getting everything off my phone in December so I could clear it out was a bit of a pain. So this year I bought a hard cover book of blank pages and will keep my info there. The question is- what info do you guys find to be important to track ?? [ After Black Friday most of my play is live so I have 2 sections, one for live and one for online (no PokerTracker for Bovada). Also, how do you use your info to help you out later ??

So far I’m tracking: Date. Day of the week ( I wish I had done this last year). Limit/Game played. Starting time and ending time. Buy-in, Re-buys and final amount at cash-out. ( If I sit in some little game for 20 minutes while waiting for a seat in my preferred game and win or lose $10 should I track this as its own entry because every dollar counts, or leave it out with the assumption that those little bits just even out in the end ?? )

My biggest question at the moment is whether or not I should try to keep track of my highest and lowest points of each session ?? If I see that I bought in for $300 then $200 again and cashed out for $620, I can assume I was felted and re-bought or went down a bit and re-loaded to bring it back up etc. Would an exact amount help in any way ?

Likewise, If I buy in for $500, run it up to $1400 but end up cashing out $150 when the game breaks, I just see $500 buy-in with a loss of $350. Is there anything to gain, knowledge wise, that would help me later if I were to try and keep track of the in-between highs and lows?? Psychologically does this mess with your head if you get to keep looking back at these and thinking “man, I should have quit when I had $xxx$ “ or has anybody truly found a leak such as “ I found that I should quit playing after xx amount of hours or I should not play past 3am on xxx nights” ??

Thanks.

PS. I know there are aps and software out there to enter this info into….. which ones do you find are the most useful and why ??

[RikaKazak]

I would NOT keep "highest and lowest points on the session"...because poker is one big game afterall, and you're going to see all sorts of swings, and by keeping track, you're just teaching yourself to be results oriented.

I just write down date, stakes, win/loss amount. I keep it only for taxes though

(I do write down interesting hands/topics in a seperate notebook though. That way I can use live hands for leggo videos, or just keep them to improve my own play)

[JamesMa]

yeah highest and lowest points will just mess with your head. For playing live, I would just record what rika said with the addition of how many hrs played so you can have an idea of your hourly although this takes forever to figure out playing 25/hands per hr. But at least you have an idea if its worth your time or not.

[team2win]

Originally Posted by RikaKazak

I would NOT keep "highest and lowest points on the session"...because poker is one big game afterall, and you're going to see all sorts of swings, and by keeping track, you're just teaching yourself to be results oriented.

I just write down date, stakes, win/loss amount. I keep it only for taxes though

(I do write down interesting hands/topics in a seperate notebook though. That way I can use live hands for leggo videos, or just keep them to improve my own play)

+1 - date, buyin amount, win/low amount = total for session, location for tax purposes...