Posted by Ask any experienced winning online poker player and they’ll tell you the importance of record keeping. Poker isn’t like a business in the sense of keeping invoices, but documenting session results is critical to the serious player. They will use apps, poker tracking software and spreadsheets to properly record their results. By doing this they can understand how well (or poorly) they are doing at regular intervals. In this post we will share the top four advantages of keeping a poker spreadsheet.
Measuring Performance
One of the primary advantages of using a poker spreadsheet is measuring performance. We don’t mean comparing today to yesterday but longer intervals of time. By documenting your results in a spreadsheet, you’ll understand how much you won or lost on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. This information is invaluable as it can give you insights into what games you should play in and which ones to avoid.
Measuring performance also allows one to set goals and measure against them. A player can also compare year against year and understand whether they are improving or not. This might serve as motivation to work harder away from the table.
Understanding Win Rate
Another advantage to using spreadsheet for poker is to understand your win rate. If you don’t document your results, how can you expect to know how much you win or lose per hour? This is key information as you need to know whether it’s worth your time or not.
Secondly, understanding your win rate can help you make informed decisions about the games you play. For instance, you may think you do better at NL $50 but perhaps you overall hourly win rate is better at NL $25. This information can be gleaned from a spreadsheet. A win rate isn’t just for cash game players though. Tournament players can track their in the money rate or return on investment (ROI) percentages. This information can be used to show potential backers if someone wants staking.
Personal Accountability
Poker is a game that can be played ignorantly, almost without accountability. This is especially the case when you don’t record your wins and losses. However, a spreadsheet will make you be accountable for the results you achieve. So, if you tend to tilt after a loss, a spreadsheet will force you to confront this type of leak. It’s a very powerful tool as it makes a poker player take personal accountability.
For the poker player who has important family ties, this personal accountability can be used for credibility. They could share their spreadsheet with their partner. This level of transparency would be highly beneficial to a relationship and might make their partner trust them to defeat a poker player. Let’s face it, a lot of player who lose prefer to not speak about their results.
Tax Purposes
Unfortunately, in some parts of the world, poker winnings are taxable. In areas of the world where governments tax winnings, it’s important for players to properly track their earnings. That’s why a poker spreadsheet can be highly beneficial. In addition to it providing the authorities with accurate records, it is likely to be inexpensive. Some spreadsheets are free and the best tools like Excel can be purchased relatively cheaply for an annual price.
Summary
Clearly, spreadsheets are a great tool for the modern poker player. They allow people to monitor their performance of poker skills on a regular basis, understand their win rate, take accountability for their leaks and provide evidence to authorities for tax purposes. Now we’ve explained them, will you be using a spreadsheet for your poker records?