Poker Session Log: What to Record After Every Session, and Why

A poker session log is a record of every session you play: what, where, for how long and with what result. It sounds like bookkeeping, and it is. It is also the only way to know your real hourly rate, to apply a bankroll rule, and to tell a downswing from a leak.

Memory cannot do it. Players remember the big wins and the bad beats and quietly lose the long, slightly losing evenings in between. A log does not.

Key takeaways

• Six fields are enough to start: date, game and stakes, live or online and where, total bought in, cashed out, and hours.
• Log every session, including the losing ones. Gaps make the results lie.
• For live play, log during the session: start time, each rebuy, end time. Reconstructed sessions are wrong in predictable ways.
• A few extras, such as start time, expenses and one line of notes, turn a log from a scoreboard into a tool for finding leaks.

The six fields every session needs

With those six, you can already calculate your net result, your hourly rate and your bankroll over time, and split all three by game, stake and live or online.

Two of them deserve a note. Bought in is every buy-in, rebuy and add-on added together, not just the first one; recording only the starting buy-in is the most common way logs overstate results. Hours played excludes breaks. A six-hour evening with an hour at dinner is five hours of poker, and counting it as six quietly lowers your hourly rate, while forgetting rebuys raises it. Neither error cancels the other.

Extras that make the log useful

The basic log tells you how you are doing. These fields help explain why:

• Start time. Results by time of day are one of the most common places to find a leak: many players are measurably worse late at night.
• Expenses. Travel, parking, food, tips and any time charge. For live players they can take a large share of the win; leave them out and your hourly rate is fiction.
• Each rebuy separately. How many times you reloaded, and when, says a lot about how a session went and how you played it.
• Table size and game conditions. Six-handed or full ring, a soft table or a tough one.
• Tournament details. Field size, finishing position, re-entries, bounties won and, for multi-day events, each day separately.
• One line of notes. How you felt, how you played, the one hand you keep thinking about. Short notes, written the same day, are what you read when a downswing comes.

Logging live sessions

Live sessions are where logs go wrong, because nothing records them for you. The reliable way is to log as you go:

1. Start the log when you sit down, with the buy-in.
2. Add each rebuy or add-on when you make it.
3. Pause or note breaks longer than a few minutes.
4. Close the log with the cash-out when you stand up, and add a line of notes before you leave.

Done this way it takes a minute per session. Done afterwards, from memory, it is slower and wrong: breaks become playing time, the third rebuy disappears, and the cash-out gets rounded up.

Logging online sessions

Online, the sites count the hands and the money for you, so the log is mostly about keeping the whole picture in one place:

• one entry per session, or per day if you play many short ones;
• every site you play on, in its own currency if it is not yours;
• rakeback and rewards in their own field, so a change in a rewards programme does not hide a change in your results;
• deposits, withdrawals and transfers between sites recorded as transfers, never as results.

If you use a hand-history tracker such as PokerTracker or Hold'em Manager for the hands, keep the session log for the money: those tools do not see live play, deposits or other sites.

Mistakes that make a log lie

1. Skipping losing sessions. Even one in ten skipped losing nights turns a break-even player into an apparent winner.
2. Logging only the net. "+$120" tells you nothing about stakes, hours or how the session went.
3. Forgetting rebuys. The most common error in live logs.
4. Counting breaks as hours. It lowers your hourly rate and hides how long you really play.
5. Mixing deposits with winnings. Money you add is not money you won.
6. Changing the format halfway. A log is only comparable with itself. Decide your fields once and keep them.

What the log gives you back

After a few dozen sessions, a consistent log starts answering real questions:

• your hourly rate, overall and by game, stake and live or online play;
• whether your sessions get worse after a few hours, or late at night;
• how your bankroll has moved, and whether it still covers your stake under your own rule;
• whether a losing month is variance or a pattern, which downswing or leak goes through in detail.

The hourly rate calculator then tells you how far to trust the hourly rate the log gives you.

Where to keep it

Paper works if you copy it somewhere you can add up. A spreadsheet is better: the free poker bankroll spreadsheet has all six fields, the useful extras and the totals ready to go.

An app is easiest at a live table. PokerRoll is a free session log and bankroll tracker for iOS, Android and the web: you start a live session with a timer, add rebuys, add-ons and bounties as they happen, record tournament days separately, and add notes and tags, in any of 16 currencies. It then works out profit, ROI and hourly rate, split by cash games and tournaments, day of the week and time of day. It does not record expenses yet, so live players who want their hourly rate after costs should keep a note of them.