Only reason I want to take my expenses into account is to simply be honest with myself. Yea if I buyin for $100 and cash out for $500, I made $400. But if I got gas, food, and some drinks and paid out of my pocket (and not from my chip stack which I think should be taken into account, even w/e you tip the dealers) I really didn't make $400, I won $400, and only made $400-expenses. Imo, its not just a matter of how much you win or make, but how much you KEEP. I think monitoring your expenses (on top of your losses) gives you a more realistic and raw number. Just wanted to get some feedback on it, and the best way to keep track of it. I'm probably gonna make a spreadsheet to keep track of everything and just fill in the blanks after every game. A sheet for buy ins, cash outs, profits, hours, game type, etc for cash and tournaments and a separate sheet for expenses.

I am trying to keep my poker bankroll separate from what I make at my day job, eventually I know I'll end up "withdrawing" something for personal expenses or w/e. But like a business expense, if I was on a business trip and went out to dinner with client or co worker or meeting w/e, that dinner is a write off and an expense - the same as eating at the casino right? Whether I'm a pro or casual player?

MOD: Thanks for moving my post, a lot more info and action in here!

I'm not stalking u (don't flatter urself.) U'll disappear in another 70 or 80 posts with all ur deep wisdom. It's attitudes like urs that helped support the 'Safe Ports' poker legislation. Poker is a 'skill' game and that's why cardrooms are legal in California. Ur actually grouping table games with poker? Along with sports betting, poker is the only other advantage game in the casino. The house holds no 'edge,' they merely take a percentage of each transaction. I'm not going to argue that poker is not 'technically' gambling but for me it isn't. Just like a stock trader makes percentage plays, so do I, yet he isn't considered a 'gambler.'

Anyway, good luck, god bless, I'll never comment on another post of urs.

Unrelated:

What was ur $4/$8 LHE winrate again?

When I track my winrate(s) I have two categories:

Table Winrate: That only includes my time spent at the table (obv.)

Actual Winrate: It includes drive time, waiting time, study time, etc. and my poker related expenses are deleted from that number as well (fuel being the biggest one)

Do you use spreadsheets to keep track of this info or something similar to pokercharts.com? I didn't even think about calculating drive time/waiting time/study time etc... When I mark my hours played, its usually from when I sat at the table to when I cashed out, which would included bathroom/smoke/food breaks etc - sometimes 5-10 mins per hour.

It seems to be that whether you calculate your profit on a hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis that it is still a "win rate." We're splitting hairs here. BB/hr is just a measurement like miles per gallon is a measure of fuel economy. The reason that BB/hr is used is explained rather well in The Theory of Poker.

Just so you know where I'm coming from here: I personally haven't done the math on my play to be able to claim any kind of BB/hr win rate or figured my std dev. I'm just happy knowing I'm a winning player because I book more winning sessions than losing ones and watch my BR steadily increase. I've even always hated having to do profit projections in the various businesses I've owned.

Some people prefer to closely measure their performance based on metrics that they can compare to other players. They are not wrong for doing so.

If u look earlier in this thread I posted a link to a thread that began in uNL. In it I posted the 'sheets' I fill out after every session I play, every time I study or do bookkeeping and whenever I make a withdrawal from my poker profits. I should have someone build me a spreadsheet (as I'm Excel challenged) but I have been doing it this way for quite awhile. I could build my own database but I would like one with a good GUI. A lot of these apps look pretty impressive though (I just haven't really delved into them.)

Just read that thread KneedUrDough. Glad to see I'm not only one still keeping manual records. Scary how similar ours are. I haven't tracked tips before(Uh,duh/me) Are you keeping a running total or just estimating post session?
Also,I break down my sessions into time intervals. First 2 hours=early,next 2-3 hrs=mid,last 2-?=late. It gives me a better idea of when I typically have most sucess,playing my best,and when I should cut short or extend a session.

That's a good idea (time intervals.) I often comment on that very thing when I summarize my session but that's not the same thing as tracking.

The 'tips' are easy for me to track because I tip so little. I know this sounds like a scumbag thing to do but I play a lot of hours, tips add up and where I play most of my poker the dealers pool their tips (across both casinos and all the games.) I tend to write down who deserves a tip, not because I won money but because of how they deal (speed being most important) and I leave small gifts with security for them (gas cards, gift certificates, w/e.) This method of gratuity saves me $2K+ a year. I always tip when I win a rather large pot so that the table doesn't pick up on my cheapness but it's still always relatively small. Lots of tourists (and regulars) over-tip so that's how I justify my actions.

The problem is that at the end of the day we have to guess about winrates anyway, so if someone is a winning player, its not atrociously horrible to give 'em a generic winrate.

Here's some of my good posts on the subject:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...gement-509726/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/96...7/#post2813899

NOTE: My post above with a digression is probably redundant now that the threads got merged. Oh well.

Fair enough, but you're thinking broadly about the question. You're also presupposing that someone's a winning player, which is an assumption that I'd like to see explicitly stated.

My problem is, people fire their "standard bankroll advice" without even considering whether there's evidence that the person asking for advice is a winner.

And of course, there are modest winners and crushing winners, the former more than the latter because we're on the tail of the bell curve*. You, Kurt, acknowledge this and accept a simplifying assumption, but most people giving the advice have never even considered it.

(Off to read the linked threads....)


----
*Kurt, you might find it interesting that I adapted this concept from the Bill James I read growing up. I never really learned to appreciate baseball, but I always appreciated his methodology in its quantitative rigor.

I just recently got a bankroll tracking program for my phone. I downloaded Poker Income for Android. My first session was at 5/10 which I do not play regularly, just kinda sat down because it was open. But I won $4k in 4 hours and picked up, so as of now with my extremely limited sample i have a winrate of $1000/hour. lol.

I just picked up Poker Journal for my iPhone.

WTF is this ****!!!!



Seriously, WTF?!?

WTF did you do KURT!!!!!!! LOL... I have my version, and have two buddies who have a version and I have never seen anything like this!!! I would write down the couple sessions you have on there do a clean erase and log them back in. If that dont work email Michael Golden and he'll fix it right up. That dont even make sense.

Oh and how the hell do you have 2 sessions at 51 hours??

Time warp. You hit 10k hours and got transported back to the start of your poker career, ldo.

Whatever mysteriously went wrong, it just as mysteriously righted itself. Graphs are working now. Odd.

Entering time and date seems a bit awkward, but I'm really looking forward to giving this program a good spin.