It's not so much for the information, it's for the perspective and psychological effect. Being able to click the ticker, "next hand"... I don't know. It helps me maintain patience.

Well if using that little device makes you feel better about your game then why not use it? It would be better ,certainly, if you don't make a big deal about it with the other players. At 1/2 or 1/3 tables many won't notice and most won't care anyway. I don't see how it would help my game , but that's just me.

BTW many, many folks go to casino poker rooms to have fun. I am one. I am from a backward Non Casino State. Regular home games is where I mostly make some extra money. If I profit from a casino trip and a session with strangers I consider it gravy!

...maybe not as small a minority as you believe.


Yep, me too. (Sample size of two doesn't make a Theorem....but anecdotally I see a majority of my tables chock full of realists at the lower levels (1/2NL, 1/3HE)


OK, then not an issue imo. Use it to your advantage...but don't assume that everyone that wants to know the stats at the end are genuinely interested. Some,,,,, will be smirking beneath their exterior facade.

Finally your OP stated something about a 40bb/100 winrate..and not being sustainable. Easy to do for a session....but when you add up 6 months of data (more or less).... But my point is,,,, are you using your psychological helper to maybe lie to yourself, to inflate your ego that would increase your confidence on that particular table? I always found when I started thinking I was the best player at a table, my A Game seemed to disappear.

Oh absolutely not. That particular 40bb session I was without a doubt the worst player there. It's an invite-only a game, a pro plays in it (he's been playing in this one for 12 years, before he was a pro so this game is "his baby" so to speak).

I like going to that game because it's one of those few where everyone knows each other and talks strategy about the hands. I always learn something there.

Somewhat related: I don't track number of hands played but I do use an iPhone poker app to track session length and tokes. By tracking tokes I have a good estimation of the number of pots won, and, more interestingly, an estimate of how much rake I've paid. (Every $1 toke is a hand won, and $5 in drop in CA).

This way I can more accurately compare casino vs home game sessions. And wow is rake a major factor. It's insidious.

Anyway, my point is that I don't always pull out my phone to click the "toke" button every time I tip the dealer and win a hand. I'm hopefully stacking chips and don't need the immediate distraction. Instead I simply make a separate stack of chips, each one indicating a hand won. During a lull, I'll take out my phone to log it and reset my stack.

You could use a similar method to count hands -- just move a chip into a separate stack, then add it up every x hands with a phone app.

'Cause using a clicker is way too much like William Hurt in "Goliath".