Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Track Your Poker Results

Aside from practicing and learning the game, there are certain habits that successful poker players have that separate them from the average casual poker enthusiast.

One of these is undoubtedly keeping track of their poker results, particularly for those who want to remain successful in the long term.

Tracking your Texas Hold’em results comes with many benefits and will allow you to manage your money and time more effectively.

1. You Get an Overview of Your Spending

The first and by far the most important reason why you should track your poker results is that it will provide you with detailed insight into how much you’re spending.

When you’re playing out of pocket and without any tracking tool, you’re most likely only concerned about two stats – the money you’re getting in and the money you’re getting out.

But, when you have a detailed report of how much you're spending and where you're spending, you'll have a much easier way of managing your bankroll more efficiently.

Sometimes you can win good money even with bad hands, while at other times, you’ll misplay your good hands, just because you played at the wrong time and at the wrong place.

Ultimately tracking your wins and losses will help you find out the specific times, games, and limits you’re most efficient at, so you get the most out of the time spent playing.

Keep in mind that it does not matter where you play since even if you visit a site in Asia like Fun88 and pick a room that does not support tracking software, you can still keep track of your poker expenses manually.

To do this, simply make a note of few things:

• How much you bring to the table
• Rebuys that you make during your session
• How long you play
• How much you cash out after your session

You can easily know your win rate and overall results by having these few numbers alone, which will be a huge help along the way.

On the other hand, if you are playing on a big online room, you will most likely have a chance to use poker software, which will do all the tracking for you, so make sure to take advantage of this option.

2. Gain an Objective Perspective of Your Game

It’s in every poker player’s nature to have a selective memory when it comes to their past successes and failures.

Remember that winning hand you had five years ago that made you feel like James Bond? Yup, that win probably pops up now and again when you talk about poker.

This is entirely normal for every player. Most of us tend to always glorify our best successes as something that should be our standard.

Although this mindset can hurt your results, what’s even more detrimental, is that we often try to paint a poor performance as just an unlucky session.

While this can be easier on the ego as a poker player, if you want to make it and remain successful, the first and most important thing is to always be honest with yourself.

By keeping detailed track of your results, you’re eliminating the possibility of selective memory. The cold, harsh numbers from your record book will always tell you the real truth.

This will allow you always to know where you stand and make the changes accordingly, depending on your progress.

3. Adapt and Improve Your Poker Game

As we highlighted in the intro, a significant reason why some players manage to succeed and become pros, while others don’t, is the former’s ability to analyze, adapt and improve their game with time.

With that in mind, if you’re not keeping track of your results, you won’t be able to objectively discern what needs improving.

For this reason, it’s best to take notes as soon as you’re done playing.

If you’re playing online, consider taking notes in real-time on everything that has caught your eye regarding your play pattern or tendencies.

Make sure to note any poker hands that you pulled off well.

Keeping a detailed list of your success will serve as a good reminder and motivational tool when the inevitable losing streak pops its ugly head.

Probably even more important is that you write down any mistakes as soon as you notice them. This will help ensure that you don’t repeat them in future games.

Improving your poker game takes a lot of time and effort. Keeping track of how you play will help make this process easier and more systematic.

How to Track Poker Results

Understanding that tracking poker results can significantly help you improve your poker game, it’s onto the next crucial question – how do you track poker results?

Although this activity sounds like a complicated task, tracking poker results is effortless and straightforward.

If you don’t have software that can do this automatically, you can do it in a notebook or, better yet, use Microsoft Excel to tabularize all of the important stats that will allow you to assess your game.

When creating an Excel table, make sure to cover all crucial information such as buy-in data, time spent playing, and how much money you’ve won or lost in each specific session.

This practice will allow you to track your poker results much more efficiently and create detailed long-term reports without too much effort.

Tracking Poker Results – In a Nutshell

Modern technology has made tracking poker results much more comfortable, and we should take advantage of it as much as possible to get the most out of our poker game.

Keeping an objective track and being analytical of all of your ups and downs is a big step towards becoming a more prolific poker player.

The goal of tracking poker results is to provide logical and precise information on your results without being clouded by your memory or any subjective opinion.

It will also allow you to understand your weaknesses and work on resolving them more efficiently.

To sum up this article, these three reasons are just the most important ones on a long list of arguments in favor of tracking results.

We want to leave you off with another helpful tip you should know when tracking poker results: always focus on improving your game, and not only the amount of money you win. If you play solid exploitative or GTO strategy, results will come naturally.