How do you track your poker bankroll?

By pulling it from your hands rather than from a spreadsheet. A poker tracker reads your history and works out what you won or lost, format by format, rake counted separately, without you entering anything.

Not to be confused with a neighbouring question. How many buy-ins do I need to play this stake? is a rule, covered in bankroll management. This page covers the one the rule assumes already settled: where I actually stand.

Why is a spreadsheet not enough?

You are the one filling it in, from memory, at the end of a session, at the exact moment you are least reliable. A losing session gets entered less willingly than a winning one, a withdrawal is forgotten, a format lands in the wrong column. The spreadsheet is not wrong, it only has what you gave it.

What does bankroll tracking measure exactly?

The result taken from your real hands, not from your data entry: what you won or lost, format by format, with rake counted separately and the curve over time.

The source is the hand history your room's software already writes, which means nothing depends on your discipline at the end of a session. It is the base job of a tracker, in the same way as calculating your stats.

Why split results by format?

A single total hides the only useful thing. You win at cash game and lose at tournaments? The total is zero and you think you are stalling, when you have one winning format and one losing format wiping it out. Split by format, the same number tells you exactly what to stop.

How do you track a bankroll across several rooms?

By letting the tracker gather each room's history into a single database. Each room only knows its own share: your real bankroll exists nowhere until you piece it back together yourself.

It is also what makes rooms comparable. The same format does not pay the same everywhere, between the standard of the tables and what the rake takes, and you can only see it once the histories are in the same tool. Without that, you are comparing an impression at one room to an impression at another.

What do you see by filtering your results?

What a total hides. Take the MTTs out to see what your cash game is worth on its own, isolate a stake, keep only one position, compare two months: each filter answers a question the global balance drowns.

That is where trends show. A single number does not say whether it is going up or down; three months filtered on one stake tell you whether you are genuinely improving or simply playing more hands. And the day you move up, it is the only way to know whether the new stake is holding, without the old one dressing up the result.

Why count rake separately?

Rake is not a loss at the table, it is a levy. You can perfectly well beat your opponents and end up losing once it is deducted.

And the two cases do not call for the same reaction. If you are losing at the table, you work on your game. If you are losing to rake, you change format or you go and get rakeback. Melted into a single number, you do not even know which of the two applies to you.

Does bankroll tracking tell you whether you are a winning player?

No, not before tens of thousands of hands. It tells you where the money goes, format by format, not whether you beat your stake.

Variance is such that a losing player can show a profit over several thousand hands, and the reverse is just as true. That is a volume most recreational players never reach, and it is exactly why tracking serves something else: seeing which format costs you, not handing you a certificate of winning player.

Frequently asked questions

How do you track a poker bankroll?

By pulling it from your hands rather than entering it by hand. A tracker reads your history and works out what you won or lost, format by format, rake counted separately.

Is a spreadsheet enough to track a bankroll?

As long as you fill it in honestly, and that is the weak point: a losing session gets entered less willingly than a winning one, a withdrawal is forgotten. It only has what you give it.

Why split poker results by format?

A single total hides the only useful number. You win at cash game and lose at tournaments? The total is zero and you think you are stalling, when one format is wiping out the other.

How do you track a bankroll across several rooms?

By letting a tracker gather each room's history into one database. Each room only knows its own share, so your real bankroll exists nowhere until you piece it together.

What are filters for in bankroll tracking?

To see what a total hides: take the MTTs out to judge the cash game alone, isolate a stake, compare two months. That is what shows a trend where a global balance shows a number.

Why count rake separately?

Rake is not a loss at the table, it is a levy. You can beat your opponents and still end up losing once it is deducted: losing at the table and losing to rake do not call for the same reaction.

Does bankroll tracking say whether you are a winning player?

No, not before tens of thousands of hands, a volume most recreational players never reach. It tells you where the money goes, format by format, not whether you beat your stake.

How is this different from bankroll management?

Bankroll management is a rule: how many buy-ins it takes to play a stake. Tracking measures where you actually stand, from your hands.