Record Keeping
One great advantage to playing on the Internet is the ease in being able to take
notes while playing. I have seen some players take a notebook to a live poker
game, hut this is a tedious exercise and communicates to the other players that you
are a serious player. There are three types of record keeping that I find helpful:
1. Earnings results: At a minimum, you should record your gain/loss and time
played for each poker session.
2. Player analysis: Since you will be playing hundreds and even thou sands of
different opponents, it is to your advantage to record notes on your
opponents and their various playing styles.
3. Hand analysis: Recording the results of various hands and the strategies you
employed can help you better evaluate your individual play.
Let's discuss each of these in more detail and some of the tools available to make
this an easier task.
Earnings Results
Every player should record the gain/loss, lime, site, game, and limit for each
session. With this information, you can calculate your earnings rate at each game to
track how you are doing. This helps you to constantly evaluate your game and
benchmark yourself to other players.
In general, a very good to advanced player can expect to earn about one big bet an
hour at a full table Hold'em game. If you are averaging below one big bet an hour,
then you know there is something in your game that needs improvement (given
enough hours to have a statistically viable sample).
One of the great tools on the market is StatKing offered by ConJelCo. StatKing is
basically a statistical database where you are able to record your results for each
session and then evaluate them in many different ways. You simply input the date,
site, game, limit, hours, and gain/loss for each playing session. StatKing will then
calculate your earn rate and standard deviation by month, year, or any other time
period, You can also sort by game, limit, site, or any combination of the three.
There is also a helpful function that tells you how much bankroll you need, what
your earning rate is within a certain probability, and how much you could win or lose
in a 10-hour or 100-hour time period. You could just use a spreadsheet to do all of
this yourself, but for a small price I find StatKing invaluable.
Player Analysis
Your opponents have many different playing styles. Some players are rocks who
never bluff and only raise with the nuts, while others are loose attacking every pot.
You can save and earn bets when you know what type of player you are playing.
Since you cannot see faces, it is difficult to just "know" all of your opponents by
name alone. Taking notes on your opponents helps a lot if you play with a player
and then don't see him for several weeks or months later.
Most sites allow you to record notes about the players on the site, You simply right
click on the opponent and you are able to record notes on that player that are easily
accessible. You should record general notes on their play as well as specific notes
on how hands were played. An example of a general note might be, "weak player,
loose starting hands, calls too much to the river, and likes check raise bluffs on the
turn." In addition. I developed a short hand notation to record how they have played
various hands. For example, "cR66BB" means that the player called a raise in the
big blind with 66.
After recording many of the hands that your opponents play, you can begin to get a
feel for the quality of their starling hands and the strategies they use after the flop.
When does he raise the flop? Does he ever semi-bluff? Does a check-raise always
mean a very strong hand? Answers to these questions can save and earn you bets.
If the site doesn't have a feature where you can record notes, another way is to
simply record notes in a spreadsheet while you are playing. Simply sort the players
you are playing to the top of the spreadsheet, and then toggle back and forth
between the game and the spreadsheet.
In addition to taking notes white you are playing, I highly recommended that you
take advantage of the hand histories that you can request from the site. This is a
great tool to evaluate each opponent's play away from the game so that you are not
distracted.
Advanced Concept: One great advantage to using hand histories is that you are allowed to see your
opponents' cards if they call the river, even though they might not show their cards in actual play
when they lose. This can help you learn more about each opponent quicker.
There are a couple of software tools, Poker Tracker and PokerStat, which make it
even easier to evaluate your opponents. Both products will automatically download
your hand histories into the software so that you can evaluate a variety of things
about your play and that of your opponents.
The software also calculates your earning rate for your play, although I still
recommend using StatKing to track earnings. However, both software programs will
calculate the earnings results of your opponents'. You can easily see exactly how
much each of your opponents has earned or lost while playing at a table with you.
In addition to their earn rate, you can see a great deal of information about your
opponent:
-
How often they call preflop
- How often they raise
- What percentage of the time they play to a showdown
- How often they defend their blinds against a raise from late position
- How often they will try to steal the blinds from late position
- What percentage of showdowns do they win.
This is just a sample of the information you can evaluate. You can also ask the
software to list all of the hands you have played with a particular opponent. Of
course, you still can't see their hand if they folded, but you will be able to go through
their hands pretty quickly to get a feel for their play. For those opponents I play
against a lot, I will sort their hands to look for specific tendencies. For example, you
can ask for all the hands where the player check-raises. You can then see if this
opponent will only check-raise with very strong hands or sometimes will semi-bluff.
The software also allows you to evaluate all of the hands that you play, which is
discussed more in the next section of the chapter.
Both of these products are evolving quickly with new features added each month. I
suggest evaluating both products online for their most up-to-date features and
pricing information. PokerStat can be found at !!!!!!!!! and
Poker Tracker at !!!!!!!!!!! Both sites offer a free download of a
demo database to try out the software.
Hand Analysis
It is also very important to constantly evaluate your game and see which strategies
and hands are most profitable. For example, how profitable is 33 when played in
late position? What about KT? AK? I read about a poker professional who kept a
notebook for over a year and a half in a live game recording notes on every single
hand that he played. He then returned home and recorded his notes into a
database in his computer to evaluate the results for every single hand. This gave
him a great tool to evaluate what is profitable and what is not!
However, this is a tremendous amount of work. Poker Tracker and PokerStat allow
you to do this almost automatically. With these tools, you can evaluate every hand
you have played and use filters to look at almost every type of situation you can
imagine. You can sort by number of players at the table, position, and hands where
you raised preflop, etc. For example, this tool can help you determine how many
callers you need for various hands to be profitable from each position.
There is no better way to evaluate your play and look for leaks in your game, If you
are playing hands that are unprofitable, these software programs can quickly
identify the problem. You can also use the software to identify other leaks in your
game after the flop. If you are serious about improving your game, these products
are an indispensable tool.
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