Keeping track of poker earnings

How can you know if you are a winning player if you are not keeping track of poker earnings? Playing poker is a long term game. In the short term luck plays a much bigger role and your bankroll can experience large upswings and downswings. Even the worst player will win sometimes, and even the best player will sometimes face big losses. This is one of the main reasons why texas holdem is so popular. New players often get runs of good luck, creating the illusion that they are great players, so they keep playing and eventually they lose.

As a matter of fact, only about ten percent of the players are long term winners, the rest are losers or break even players. You want to be a part of the winning minority. The information provided here should help you to get you on the right track.

But it will also take effort from you to really improve your game and consistently play your best. You will need to find out what your weaknesses are and improve them. You will need to work to minimize your losses and maximize your win rate. Poker software like Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker help you with this. It offers you the opportunity to store statistics over your and your opponents play and analyse how much you win or lose with different starting hands in different positions, replay hands to find mistakes and much more.

You might not want to invest the $50 to buy a poker tracking program at the very beginning of your poker career. That’s no problem as it can be a significant percentage of your bankroll when you first start playing, but you should still keep some records on your own. It can easily be done in an excel spreadsheet. After each session, take a note on how much you won or lost, how many hands you played and for how long. This will make it possible for you to keep track so you know if you are a long term winner or not. Also, you should take a peek at your hand histories that you can get from the online poker site. Which hand should you have played different? Where did you actually make play the best way possible?

You should also keep notes on your opponents, especially those who you play against often. Knowing their play will give you an important advantage. Is the opponent the kind of player who bets out with very strong hands? Then you should fold often to her bets. Does she call with almost anything? Then you should never bluff her. Knowing your enemy is an asset that pays off in poker.

Also, I strongly recommend to take the advise of those who are more knowledgeable about poker than you. With that I mean, read poker books, post on poker forums, etc. There is a lot of information on the subject of poker on the Internet and in books that will pay for itself many times over.

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