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Play Records

Play records are essential to the winning Texas Hold'em Poker player.

If you don't keep records of your Texas Hold 'em Poker playing, start now. Make a form on your computer and print some copies. If you have the software, set up a database on your hard drive. At least get a notebook and a calculator. If you need to make notes in the casino, write on the back of a keno ticket and copy the information to your play records when you get home. Accurate play records will tell you a lot about yourself, your strategy and your opponents.

After a few losing sessions of hold 'em poker, you might be asking yourself the age old poker player questions. Do they know something I don't? Have they figured out my game? Is this just a temporary losing streak? Do I have a tell? Am I playing too tight? Should I change my strategy? Am I playing too loose? Will I ever win again? What should I change? All these doubts about yourself and your game will soon have a negative effect on your play.

Look over your play records when you get home. You'll find the answers there. I've always found that a losing session was just a little bad luck and the other players were getting some money back, that's all. A good set of records is the best thing I know for a poker player's peace of mind and a good night's sleep.

Your play records should include the date of each session, start and stop times, hours played, wins or losses, running totals and an hourly win rate. You'll also want to have totals in terms of big bets. If you play in hold 'em games of various limits then big bets per hour is a better indicator of how you are doing than dollars per hour. Your play records should have notes about your play, your opponents, tells you've noticed and other information that might be useful. At the very least, your play records should be good reading later.

Texas Hold 'em Poker is enjoyable. Winning is great. Keeping play records is unexciting at best, but the information in good play records is essential if you want to win. Without play records you won't know if changes in your strategy have had a positive or a negative effect. You won't know if you're getting better or worse or why. In fact, if you don't keep records, you don't even know if you're winning or losing in the game and you certainly don't know how much.