Poker Forums

You do not have to have PokerTracker at the beginning, although it is a good tool to use. You can build a perfectly good excel spreadsheet and record the following:

Start time, Start $, End time, Total time for session, End $, Net Profit (Loss), Net Profit (loss) per hour for session, Net Profit (loss) per month, Net Profit (loss) per year.

Keep these numbers religiously and the TRUE facts will emerge.

Remember that a negative number (aka "Burn Rate) is not necessarily wrong, since you are learning to play. Knowing your "Burn Rate" is the best way to motivate you to turn it around and creat an "Earn Rate" .

Also ... have fun. Poker skills seem to grow when you are observant and enjoying the game. Somebody pulls off a suck out against you, by hitting one of his two outs ... ... don't automatically flip out. Think about it. Recently a young player emailed me his Bad Beat story with the hand history of the hand played, moaning and groaning about how lucky his opponent got hitting his two outer and how unlucky he was.

I looked at the hand in question and sure enough, the complaining player had made some bogus, microscopic river bet, giving his opponent 20 to 1 odds to draw his two outer. Of course he got called.

Enjoy the game, ask questions, think about the game, and have some fun. Understand image, and play around with it.

Try this ... fold for two entire cycles. Then raise with some sort of trash hand. If the table is not observant or loose, you will get called. Usually, you are already pegged as a tight player. This is your image at work.

The day I started understanding table image and using it, my game took a big step up.

That said ... you must keep records IMHO.

__________________
flintsword

"The lucky player is usually the player that knows how much to leave to chance."

Blog www.myspace.com/flintsword

just a small thought, yes if you want to improve your game you will learn by playing better players/higher stakes, but if you are looking to move up stakes you still have to have good table selection, as you are looking for the bad players at that stake, not the best ones