Poker Spreadsheet - Poker Bankroll Spreadsheet

Using a Spreadsheet to Build Your Texas Holdem Bankroll

Poker Spreadsheet - Poker Bankroll Spreadsheets

Keeping a poker spreadsheet is one way to evaluate a poker opponent’s playing tendencies. Though a poker spreadsheet sounds quite old school, it's still effective. A poker spreadsheet is a document that a poker player keeps in order to record wins, losses, significant hands and opponents.

Many of the older professionals who play a lot of online poker live still keep these poker spreadsheets, to help them organize their thoughts. Poker bankroll spreadsheets are also common, since a poker player can record how his bankroll has grown or fallen and when these changes have taken place.

The idea in each case is that poker is a game of numbers and results, so a person can learn a lot by tracking these results and studying the math behind the results. Because poker is a game where you bet on ever changing odds, but over a long period of time, the luck evens out, so the better players start to have better bankroll stats. By studying your opponent's bankroll stats, while also studying your own results, you learn which players to target, which players to avoid and what (some) players know about your online poker career.

How to Use a Poker Spreadsheet

Using a poker spreadsheet should be systematic. Too many poker players start their poker spreadsheet, then forget about it, or only keep it part of the time. To be accurate, your records need to be consistent. Only then is your study scientific, and therefore likely to inform and improve your game.

This is even more the case, if a poker player is looking to produce a poker bankroll spreadsheet. Keeping track of winnings and loses doesn't work, if a poker player picks and chooses which sessions he chooses to keep track of. It's too tempting to only report the good news, which gives a skewed view of your recent poker results.

To maintain a healthy bankroll management plan, a poker player must ensure they can record the size of their bankroll.

Things to Record on a Poker Spreadsheet

Different poker players decide to record different things in their poker spreadsheet. However, here are some of the common stats on a poker spreadsheet.

Session results - Poker players should record the amount they won or lost at the end of every session they play. This allows them to have a firm grasp on their long term play. It also allows poker players to see when they've played and at what frequency.

Significant Hands - You'll have a few large hands in each game, so this keeps track of whether you tend to win or lose these hands. This allows you to look back at your plays and decide whether or not you made the right call, given you opponent. Poker players sometimes make bad decisions in the heat of the moment, so this is a great way to look back at these decisions, to decide if you should make the right play in the future.

Opponents tendencies - Poker players usually write down in their poker spreadsheets certain notes on opponents. Does an opponent get caught up in big hands? Is an opponent tight? This helps a poker player organise his thoughts and adjust to different opponent types.

Bankroll - Poker bankroll spreadsheets track a poker players bankroll size. This is tied to the session results, but a poker player should always know how much money they have set aside for their bankroll. A lot of new players simply sit down and play with whatever money they have in their pocket, which is not great bankroll management.

Poker bankroll spreadsheets force players to play within their limits.

Rough estimate of hands played each session - A poker player shouldn’t be expected to count every hand he plays. However, it's easy to get a rough idea of how many hands have been played in a session. For instance, if a poker player is playing at a 10 handed table and he is dealt on the big blind 10 times, he has played 100 hands.

This statistic helps a player deal with sample size, which is an important factor when considering any poker stat.

Poker Spreadsheet Specifics

When it comes to the statistics poker players should be recording in their database, this is just a guide. The more thorough a poker player can be in his information, the more he's benefit and improve his game. It's simply a matter of having more information.

The statistics a poker player records in his poker bankroll spreadsheet can be used to monitor his play. To start with, he can see if he is a winning or a losing player over a number of different sessions. For instance, being a winner over one session isn’t much evidence of being a winning player, but being a winner over 100 sessions could well be.

This method also allows poker players keep on top of tells on their opponents. When a poker player plays hundred of different poker opponents over a number of sessions, sometimes it can be hard to remember tells. By taking notes, a poker player solves this problem with a quick and easy reference.

A poker player uses their poker bankroll spreadsheet to track his bankroll and practice bankroll management. By having an exact count of his bankroll, a poker player sees what limits he can comfortably play, along with those he can’t. Bankroll management is one of the key elements that determines whether a poker player succeed.

Good Bankroll Management

As a rule of thumb good bankroll management differs from game to game, as well as stake to stake. For no limit Texas Holdem, newer poker players should stick to a relatively simple form of bankroll management. Whatever stake you are playing, you should have around 2000 times the big blinds in your total bankroll. This allows poker players to ride out the wave of variance that inevitably hit them.

A big mistake newer players make is playing outside the realms of their bankroll. This can cause them to lose everything. Playing in games that are too high dollar for your bankroll makes you sweat bad beats too much, which in turn leads you to going on tilt.

Playing online gives you many advantages that playing live doesn't. A lot of one poker players keep databases and record of their play. However, they use an automatic poker tracker to collect the results for them.

This method allows poker players to collect even more results, with more detail. Instead of just recording significant hands, it records all hands, with the option to review them at any point during their poker playing career.

This helps poker players review and improve their play in even more detail, with less amounts of effort, since the majority of the record keeping is done automatically.

Poker Bankroll Spreadsheets

Using a Spreadsheet to Build Your Texas Holdem Bankroll