It occurs to me that I'm at the stage in the game where I should be tracking my cash somehow rather than the faulty running total in my faulty head. Yes, I know I should have done it sooner, but frankly was afraid to take too close a look in case the amount of money lost scared me away from poker. Now I feel that I have some sort of a consistently ok online game going and am ready to face the numbers. If you knew my level of abhorrence with anything accounting related, you'd understand how bit a step this is for me.
So I'm setting up an Excel spread sheet. this is what I *think* I should be tracking:
- Site (I'd like to also track how much the site's interface affects me)
- Game (NLHE, LHE, Omaha, Stud)
- Type (tournament, SnG, cash)
- Buy-in
- Net profit/loss
- Length of time played
- Emotional state
Yeah, it won't hurt to note if it was a blogger event, or against the random fish. Also note if you were in the girlie chat or not. You need to identify what works for you, or even what could be distractions.
Otherwise, you're pretty good. Make sure you're doing the same for live play.
I would add the size of the table (6 or 9, etc.) for live games and the size of the tourney.
If you listen to an ipod or music etc., that is good to note too.
I track everything you mentioned, plus the table/tourney size (ring, turbo 18 player, rebuy madness, etc.). I like the idea of the blogger, chat, music component...just another tool to see what works and doesn't work. I also track (in tourneys) what my finish is and how I went out. If you really want to geek it up, set up multiple sheets in one workbook. Have the top sheet be your bankroll summary, that shows deposits to each site, specific withdrawls from each site (transfers, bounties, etc.), neteller (or other) transactions, and sums them up to provide net bankroll info for each site PLUS an overall summation for the entire roll. Then on the followign sheets, set one up for each site you play at. You can then link the net amounts on each site to the master bankroll sheet, as long as they're in the same workbook. I'm still tweaking mine, but it seems to work fairly well.
If you haven't, you should check out http://www.pokerdominator.com/. It allows for logging more than all you have described but emotional state, and you could use the "level of play" field for that--I don't use that one myself. It has nice graphing functions, allows export to Excel, and the administrator is very responsive if you are having issues. Oh, it's free.
I track the place I finished in SNG's and the actualy tournament numbers for the SNG's.
If I am multi-tabling, I also track the cumulative time involved.....helps me to get a more accurate $/hr rate.
With all the VIP Programs available, I track the points accumulated for a session.
Also recording how you go out in an SNG is pretty valuable.....
Go with Pokerdominator as Sox suggested.
I've lagged on my tracking but this is what I used when I was doing so.
Don't forget to log how many beers you had drunk at the time of the tournament start, Kat. Important to know whether you benefit from the aggression that drunkenness creates, or whether you need to keep more control than drunkenness allows you.
Hey Kat, If you aren't used to tracking much, you will be starting a new habit which can be difficult so I would recommend picking something simple to track and not try to do too much too fast.