Quote:
Originally Posted by CIarence
Wait, you guys include travel time and breaks in your logs? That seems silly. I make a note of the time in my phone when I sit down at the table. If I take a >15 min break, I adjust the starting time. My purpose is to track how I'm doing in the poker game. Do you deduct the cost of gas from your net total also?
Not directly in my log. I assume that bathroom breaks are uniform regardless of location and an unavoidable few hands I have to miss. But the transportation costs are worth considering when you have multiple options for places to play. Since the distance doesn't change from session to session, I use an average travel time for each location, and a general fuel cost (could make this more accurate I guess).
Take a simplified example:
Casino A, $5/hr winrate, 30 mins travel time one way, free parking
Casino B, $10/hr winrate, 60 mins travel time one way, $10 to park/tolls
Assuming a typical 6 hour session
A) ($5*6 winnings - 40miles/30mpg*$4/gal )/(6+1)hrs = $3.52/hr
B) ($10*6 winnings - 80miles/30mpg*$4/gal - $10 parking)/(6+2)hrs = $4.92/hr
Based on the raw winrate numbers, it looks like Casino B is a better place to play, but once we account for the additional travel time and costs, there is less difference between the two. If we decrease the winrate at B a little to $8/hr:
B+) ($8*6 winnings - 80miles/30mpg*$4/gal - $10 parking)/(6+2)hrs = $3.42/hr
In this case it makes more sense to go to Casino A, even though a raw 'at the table' winrate says otherwise. This gets even more pronounced if you correct for the same 'out of the house' session length, ie leave the house at noon and get back at midnight.
Now obviously these kinds of corrections depend on the length of your session, vehicle fuel costs, etc. So I agree with you that it doesn't make sense to include them directly in your session results. But they are handy when you're looking back at a year's worth of data looking for potential leaks.