If you wanted to improve your poker game, what statistics should you track? Do players that keep a track of how much they have won/lost and where do better than players who don't?
I play online (for now) and I'm currently tracking the Date, Day of week, Start Time, End Time, Site, Game Type, Buy In, End Game Balance, Total Profit, Profit Per Hour, Hand Count and Hands per Hour in a spreadsheet. Is this data actually useful? Should I be collecting more data or less?
If you're doing this entirely by hand, tracking hand count and hands per hour is a bit overkill in my opinion (unless you're single tabling I suppose). If you figure that on average there are 85 hands an hour per table, you can use that time to instead watch the table.
I would definitely factor in your mental state, I use 1-3, as well. This will help you see just how much money you lose when you play on tilt and hopefully prevent you from spewing stacks on your next session. At least for me, my mental game was my biggest leak - by far.
A notes column would be beneficial as well!
I would then take it a step further and automate most of the remaining columns. Here's a sample spreadsheet. If you have a Google Account, you should be able to copy it and tweak it to your liking if you'd like. You can see my profit is automatically calculated (and color coded), my total time is auto-tracked, and my mental state is color coded as well.
That's just for bankroll management, which will go a long way in improving your game. The next step would be to download a trial copy of PokerTracker (or related software) and load some hand histories into it (You do have to take extra steps with Bovada, but since you didn't specify where you play I'll continue on).
I would definitely at least try the demo version of PokerTracker, because the wealth of information you'll get about yourself from there is insane. You'll know if you're playing too many/few hands, if you aren't aggressive enough, and it will even find leaks. I can't recommend it enough.
