DIY Hand Tracking

[pickettpocket]

I’m posting this for players like @JohnPen and @wildpokerdude who are frustrated by the perceived irregularities in hands they’re being dealt or with the alarming (in their minds) frequency of improbable losses.

I have a spreadsheet that I made bc I was affected by those same stresses. I use it to track my hands and results.

First, note that my sheet only tracks hands that I win preflop or in which I see the flop. Anything I muck is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned, although if it’s important to you, check your stats page to help you calculate the percentage of hands you fold preflop.

To do so, note your total number of hands played and flops seen before and after you start a session. Calculate the daily number for each by subtracting the starting figures from the ending, then Hands Played-Flops Seen-Preflop Pots Won (in the spreadsheet) tells you how many hands you mucked before the flop.

Okay, so this is what the daily progress portion of my sheet looks like. It’s on Google Sheets.

The grid on the left is for tracking each hand in which you see a flop or win prior. The diagonal lines snaking from lower left to upper right designate each of the 13 pocket pairs. The upper left portion bounded by black numbers and letters is for suited hands, and the lower right portion bounded by corresponding red numbers and letters is for unsuited.

The grey bound ledger on the right tracks results. The three '0’s you see indicate sum formulae for the following:

‘Flops Seen’ totals everything from ‘Folded on Flop’ to ‘Showdowns Lost.’
‘Postflop Pots’ totals everything from ‘Won on Flop’ to ‘Showdowns Won.’
‘All Chops’ totals ‘Chops Same’ (when you and your opponent have the same hand), ‘Chops Best’ (where you had a better kicker), and ‘Chops Worst’ (where you had a worse kicker).

The #DIV/0 entries are percentage formulae for the figures in their respective rows.
The green and blue row keeps track of Flops Seen+Preflop Pots Won, total suited hands played, total unsuited hands played, and total pocket pairs.

The orange and yellow rows indicate the number of ace-high, king-high, etc hands played, suited, unsuited, or paired, and the number of suited and unsuited Broadway hands.

Note: In this setup, hands bet on but folded pre-flop are not included.

I also copy by hand the grey, blue/green, and orange/yellow sections to reflect daily numbers, like so:

Then I erase the figures in the grid in readiness for the next session.

Here is a link to a copy of my spreadsheet.

DIY Hand Tracking

Please leave it blank for others to copy. To create a personal copy, click on the ‘Win Rate’ tab at the bottom left, select ‘Copy to’ and ‘New Spreadsheet.’ That will create a version in your private Google Docs portfolio.

Hope this helps.

[ThonBl7ror]

E: Nice work!

[smooth99]

@pickettpocket

I’m posting this for players like @JohnPen and @wildpokerdude who are frustrated by the perceived irregularities in hands they’re being dealt or with the alarming (in their minds) frequency of improbable losses.

I have a spreadsheet that I made bc I was affected by those same stresses. I use it to track my hands and results.

I think it’s a lot easier to just play your poker hands and just make a mental note to yourself when something seems off to you. If you feel your spreadsheet makes you a better player, then that’s great (for you) and when it doesn’t, then what!

[napkin_holder]

@smooth99

I think it’s a lot easier to just play your poker hands and just make a mental note to yourself when something seems off to you.

This is why your analysis of the deals is wrong. This is what we’ve all been trying to tell you. And when someone actually does scientifically track the deals and their frequencies, they show that the deals are indeed random. Memory and observation can be faulty but the numbers (when properly tracked) don’t lie.

[smooth99]

@napkin_holder

Memory and observation can be faulty but the numbers (when properly tracked) don’t lie.

All I can say in response to your post is that my memory and observations is a lot better than yours.

[pickettpocket]

Two problems with making a mental note when things seem off:

First, as Gandalf said of Barliman Butterbur: “…memory is like a lumber room; things wanted always buried.”

Second, when things are off, emotion often interferes with the rational, with memory forgotten.

[pickettpocket]

Thank you.

[pickettpocket]

One aspect I didn’t mention is that, after a decent session, the grid is like a heat map.

Most of the numbers should be concentrated in the top right sector (broadway hands, suited and unsuited), thinning out downward and to the left, but still thick along the spine (pocket pairs and middle connectors).

If you have a large concentration in the top left and bottom right, you’re playing a lot of weak aces, kings, queens, and jacks. If there’s heavy traffic in the bottom left or the middle edges, you might be playing too many garbage hands.

Again, hope this helps.

[napkin_holder]

I beg to differ.

[pickettpocket]

Never beg.

[pickettpocket]

It occurs to me in today’s early hands that I can monitor my hand selection by tracking the ratio between two types of hands:

1. Hands I think I shouldn’t have folded bc they hit the flop big, and
2. Hands I think I should have played bc they hit the flop big but would have lost my a** if I had.

[lihiue]

@pickettpocket

Most of the numbers should be concentrated in the top right sector (broadway hands, suited and unsuited), thinning out downward and to the left, but still thick along the spine (pocket pairs and middle connectors).

Just be aware that this will mostly be noise unless you’re recording millions of hands, especially if you’re looking at individual hands and not bucketing into classes (and connectors and lower pocket pairs will be losing for most players - they’re often losing even for the solver).

This is the data I collected for micro stakes: How to play Pocket A A - #10 by lihiue (That’s a summation of hands from many different players, so is representative of the average micro stakes player)

[pickettpocket]

Noise results when you play every hand combination the same amount of times. If you play certain ones more often, a pattern emerges.

I am not trying to validate or invalidate the RNG. I’m gauging my play.

[lihiue]

Noise happens because there’s so much variance in NL that you need millions of hands to get a valid signal with most hole card combos.

I don’t know if you looked at the image from the other thread, but the same chart for just the 130K hands I played doesn’t look anywhere near as clear as that. Sure QQ+ should be winning for everyone over even a smallish sample, but you will almost certainly see some random stuff, like 77’s and 99’s winning but 88’s losing, a T5s you’ve played only a couple of times from the big blind winning at some crazy rate, etc.

I’m not saying don’t track this, you absolutely should, I think your just underestimating how long it’s going to take for clear patterns to emerge.

[pickettpocket]

Okay, I think I see where we haven’t connected. I’m tracking the frequency with which I play specific hands and the rate in general at which I win or fold at each point in a hand (flop, turn, river, showdown). It’s about hand selection and level of aggression.

The image capture below shows my play thus far today. You can see my range, that I’m having a difficult time winning showdowns, but still winning a fair amount of hands preflop.

Basically, I can confirm my play is consistent or see whether results improve or decline if I alter my strategy.

[lihiue]

Ah, yeah, must admit I hadn’t actually looked at your spreadsheet closely. I was assuming you were tracking which hands were winning, not the frequency you play them.

It’s actually pretty hard to lose that frequently at showdown. Sure, it’s a really small sample, but there’s probably a leak there somewhere. It can happen if most pots are very multi-way across multiple streets though.

[pickettpocket]

Am now 8/38. Seen 90 flops, had one straight, one flush, no sets. I’m just not catching cards.

[napkin_holder]

@pickettpocket

Basically, I can confirm my play is consistent or see whether results improve or decline if I alter my strategy.

As far as tracking your range (measuring how tight or loose you are generally) this is perfectly fine, but as for any win rate, @lihiue is correct that you need much larger sample size to draw conclusions on your strategy. You are doing poorly at showdown today. You could play exactly the same tomorrow and do well. We don’t know, because the variance is much greater than your sample size. I mean how many hands do you play in a day? 200? 500? 1000? 1000 would be a lot of poker for one day but miniscule for profit analysis.

However, I would imagine that once you track 50k or 100k hands, you’ll probably start getting meaningful data that you can analyze for your actual profitability, so keep it up.

[lihiue]

@pickettpocket

Am now 8/38. Seen 90 flops

8/38 won at showdown? You should never even really get to showdown 38 times from 90 flops. Is everyones fold button broken?

[lihiue]

One genuine piece of advice - I would hide, or at least not focus on the percentages you have calculated (hands won and lost). That’s not directly in your control.
The thing that matters more in the long run are the fold percentages. Here it looks like your folding 26% of hands on the flop, 11% on the turn and 16% on the river. Tiny sample size, but those are likely all too low, all point in the same direction, and would likely explain why your won at showdown percentage is bad (if it actually is - again, too small sample size to say)