Keep track of your poker performance

Why is it important to keep track of how well you do in your poker endeavors? It’s simple: you need to know where your strengths and weaknesses are, so you can maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Regardless of how objective a person you consider yourself, when you rely solely on memory to track your performance, you tend to come up the inconclusive results. People generally tend to forget the bad moves they make and they tend to remember and cherish the good ones. That will pretty much prevent you from creating an accurate image on just how good a player you are and on where you lose money and where you win it.

Most people are so disorganized they don’t even have a separate bankroll for poker. They mix their regular dough with the one they take to the poker tables, and at the end of the day they fail to assess how much they won or lost. Bankroll management is extremely important and so is rakeback. A solid deal like the  or the Absolute poker rakeback can have a significant contribution to your overall bankroll, and such deals can actually turn a slightly losing player into an overall winner.

When I’m talking about tracking your poker antics, I’m not talking about making a mental note on how much money you take to the table and how much you cash out. I’m talking about keeping track of the limits you play on. You may dominate one limit, then move up to a higher one and barely make any money. Under such circumstances it obviously makes more sense to move back down, even though you’ll probably have to part with the bragging rights.

To keep detailed statistics of your actions, you can use the low tech approach (pencil and paper) or the high tech one (Pokertracker). These are the factors you’ll have to track: the date and the exact time of your session start (you tend to lose track of time in the heat of the action), the exact time of the end of your session. The total amount of money you take to the table and the total amount you cash out.

Also note the limit on which you play and the location (this is very important whether you’re a live or on online player). Also keep track of your monthly performance as well as your overall one.