Keep Good Poker Records

One of the least discussed skills in being successful at playing poker is money management. I've seen it written that you need to have 300 times the big bet (BB) as your bankroll. This is to help you overcome the obvious ups and downs of the turn of the cards. What this means is that if I am playing mostly at a $1/2 limit table, I would need to have a bankroll of $600. This is not what you bring to the table, this is the money that you have as a reserve. It is suggested that you bring 25-30 BB ($50-60 in this case) to the table. This all seems like sound advice. I can see how your play might be affected negatively if you are very close to busting out. It is nice to be sitting on a cushion. I will usually leave a table if I lose more than half of my initial table buy-in.

Another thing that you must do is keep good (and honest) records of your play. I have (since I began playing 6/04) logged all of my tournament data and put them into my own spreadsheet. I very recently fould a free site where you enter the pertinent table information and the site will produce and keep all types of charts and graphs for you. There are other stat sites and software that you can pay for out there, but I like and am comfortable using this free site: Check Your Bets. I enter all of my tourney stats and now all of my ring game play on this site.

Some interesting facts I learned from my stats (data is from 4/05/05):
--I make about $2/hr less playing ring games versus playing in tournaments.
--I've been most successful between 11pm-12am and I am least successful between 8pm-9pm.
--I fare much better playing a session for 1-2 hours (+$9.97/hr) versus 0-1 hours (-$4.18/hr) or 2-3 hours (+$3.45/hr).
--I do better when I play 2 tables at once rather than only 1 table.
--A very pretty one month (net profit) graph: