How to track a poker session

The short answer: when you sit down, start a timer and log your buy-in. Add every rebuy as it happens. When you leave, record your cash-out. Do this the same way every session and you'll have everything you need to compute profit, win rate, and hourly rate — no hand histories required.

The five-step routine

1. Record the start. Date, game, stakes ("NL $1/$2"), and your start time. Starting a timer the moment you sit is what makes your hourly rate honest later.
2. Log your buy-in. Enter your initial buy-in. This is your baseline — everything else is measured against it.
3. Track rebuys live. Every top-up, every reload — add it in the moment. Rebuys are the single most common thing people forget, and a forgotten $100 rebuy turns a losing night into a fake winning one.
4. Cash out. When you rack up, record your final stack. Net profit is simply cash-out minus every dollar you put in.
5. Add context. Note the venue, and rate how well you played (A/B/C works well). Whether you won is luck plus skill; how you played is just skill — tracking both separates the two.

Live or after the fact?

Track live whenever you can. A running timer and in-the-moment rebuys are far more accurate than anything you reconstruct hours later. But a session logged from memory an hour after you leave still beats one you never logged — the enemy is the note you keep meaning to write and never do.

Mistakes that ruin your data

• Skipping losing sessions. The fastest way to fool yourself. Every session counts or none of them do.
• Forgetting rebuys. Track total in, not just the first stack.
• Ignoring time. Without duration you can't compute hourly rate — the metric that tells you whether the game is worth your night.
• Inconsistent stakes labels. "1/2", "$1-2", and "NL200" should be one consistent label so results group correctly.

Making it effortless

The reason people quit tracking is friction — a spreadsheet you have to open on a laptop you didn't bring. Logging from your phone at the table, with a timer that runs on your Lock Screen, removes that friction entirely. That's exactly what tracking on iPhone is built for, and it's why the habit finally sticks.