Keeping records: Satellites, freerolls, FTP sitngos...

I just kind of wanted some advise on what to show on your records while playing in freerolls, or sitngos using points from the poker site. I have just decided to neglect recording any freeroll or points tournaments that I play in because I find that it just drives down my hourly wage. Is this correct to do or is there some other way I need to record these tournaments, because I am spending my time on them.

Also, when playing in satellites, let's say a $5 + $0.50 buy in satellite that you can win entry into a $200 + $16 tournament. I have been recording that as a $5.50 investment, and if I win entry I show a $216 profit from that tourney, then spending $216 on another tournament as if I just won the cash and turned around and spent it, which seems right, but if I do not cash in that main tourney it negatively affects my hourly wage as well... Should I just be showing all of the time I spent in the two tourneys and a loss of $5.50?? Any input will be appreciated, thanks!

Ryan

I personally don't bother about hourly pay, it means nothing to me.

If you play cash games this might make some sense, but in the case of tournaments, the hourly wage is a completely useless piece of statistics because income derived from playing MTTs is not regular enough.

What matters in tournament play is the long run and perhaps the medium run. I may be losing money on MTTs for weeks on end and then get a good result.

For that reason my unit of choice for recording and analysing MTT results is the month. I have the habit of separating my results in months and aim at a 4 digit profit every period.

So recording a $215 profit won at a $5.50 satellite and then recording a $215 debit if and when you actually play the tournament is question is perfectly fine. My hourly rate won't be affected because I don't have one for tournaments. And $215 won't be too large a swing within the month.

I don't know if this is sound but I do not consider time spent playing tournaments, only profits and losses regardless of the time it took to achieve them.

Of course for cash games it's different and that's why I have segregated the 2 disciplines as if they were different activities.

If you're talking about recording your gains and losses for tax purposes, then your log should show your entry fees and your winnings for each tournament. Just add up your net winnings (prize less entry fee) for each tournament and report the total as Other Income. For losing tournaments, report those losses (but only up to the amounts of any gains (from your winning tournaments)) on your itemized deductions. Basically, you need to report each poker session, and for tournaments, each tournament is considered a session.

For your satellite wins, I would think that you should recognize the income only when you use the T$, whether it be to sell them for cash or to enter another tournament. If you enter another tournament with T$, then I would count the profit ($216 - $5.50) as income. Then the $216 tournament that you just entered would be another session in which you will either lose $216 or make a profit of $x - $216. This may not be exactly right, but I think it's very close and you'd have a good level of substantiation if you were asked to prove your figures.

Thanks guys, both of you helped a lot. I was looking mostly to the best way to do it for my own records in keeping track if I'm playing profitable poker or not, but the tax advice is good to know too.

Blunder, I guess I never really thought about keeping hourly separate for tourneys and cash games, or not keeping hourly at all for MTTs. Mostly tho, when I keep hourly records it is on single table sitngos, do you think I should throw out hourly for that too? Also, if you don't mind my asking, you said you look for 4 figure profit each month for your MTTs...what's your general buy in range and what tourneys do you usually play?

I see your point. I can think of two options for you. One: If you win a $5.50 Sit and go, show that winnings as $5.50. Then show the bigger tournament as $5.50. If you place in that tourney, then your ROI will be correct. The other option is to show the SnG as a loss regardless of where you place. Then show the bigger tourney as a freeroll. I'd go with the first option.

chap

Hey Ryan,

I live in the UK so I don't pay any tax on poker profit because the authorities (wrongly) believe poker is gambling. Gambling profits are exempt from tax if you're not a pro.

I'm not a big fan of the hourly rates when it comes to poker simply because it doesn't seem to make much sense given the variance you have in the game. The exception is when you play cash games because you tend to stick to the same limits and given the fact that the blinds do not increase, you play what I could call "pure poker". If you specialise in cash games, you should have an idea of your hourly rate. Otherwise I tend to think the information is simply not one I can use. In addition, for most of us, playing poker is a pleasure, even a passion. So how do you put a price on the work you do if you love your job? It's as if an artist was trying to work out his hourly rate. It doesn't make much sense to me. So I disregard it.

I disregard it because most of the poker I play is tournaments (that includes satellites, SNGs, and MTTs). They tend to be subject to the rare event (ie the tourney win or the final table of a 50K MTT with 3000 players for instance). So the hourly rate or even the daily rate tends to be misleading information. I have a mate who spent the majority of the year losing money playing tournaments and then half way into the year, he finished heads up in a large field MTT and a couple of weeks later he qualified for the WSOP!! So what good is the hourly rate information for him during the first 6 months of the year? It was telling him he was spending tens of hours every month losing hundreds whereas after 6 months he found himself way up!!

So this is the way I see:

- If you're mostly a cash game player, playing 90% of your poker playing ring games at similar limits (ie you're not a donkey playing 0.25/0.50 then 25/50 then 2/4 on the same day), you should get an idea of your hourly rate. Basically you wanna make sure you use your time efficiently. And you may also want to consider your playing poker as if it was a job to you.

- If you're playing large or medium field MTTs (say from 400 to 3000 entrants), hourly rates mean nothing. You don't even know how much you're gonna be around to play anyway, it'll depend on whether you make it deep or if you bust out early. Really the timeframe you want to look at here is the quarter or the year. You're playing for the chance to make big bucks from a handful of final tables and unless you're really good, those will be rather rare occurences. You should not be concerned about the short run here.

- If you're playing satellites or SNGs, you wanna be looking at the average daily or weekly rates. You're gonna be playing the same sats and the same SNGs day in day out and wins are not rare, they are regular. Although you may spend a whole day not cashing at all playing a lot (rare though), you will win quite a few every week.

To answer your second question, I play almost exclusively at Poker Stars (the majority of my play) and Betfair Poker (mainly cash game here).

I play mainly satellites and large field MTTs (some SNGs but that's not my expertise).

For satellites, my favourites are the $5.50 rebuy satellites to the Daily Eighty Grand and Nighty Seventy Grand on Poker Stars which are both worth $55 (there are 10 of these a day). That's where my ROI is the highest. I also play quite a few $3/$8.80/$11 rebuy sats to the Sunday Million/Sunday Warm up worth $215 (again Stars has plenty of them especially at weekends). Another regular is the $3/11 rebuy sat to the Nightly Hundred Grand worth $162 (they have 3 of those a day).

I unregister from every satellite I win regarless of whether I am gonna play the tourney or not and get Tournament Dollars as a refund (T$). I build a bank of T$ which appear as a separate balance to my cash balance. I use that to fund my satellite play and my MTTs (and some SNGs)

For MTTs I tend to play the ones that have a very large field. I play the $3.30 rebuy 40K GTD (19h15 and 01h00 GMT), the $5.50 rebuy 50K Gtd (23h00), $8.80 rebuy 32K Gtd (15h00), the $11 rebuy 70K Gtd (21h00) for the rebuys and the $22 32K Gtd (17h00), the Daily Thirty Grand (19h00), the $11 40K Gtd (00h.00) and the $27.50 40K Gtd (01h00) for freezeouts. I also play a couple of turbos with 20K in the price pool as well as a weekly 20K freeroll Poker Stars offers to its Silver Star members.

I play about 5 to 10 SNGs a week but I'm up only slightly on those although if I include the "steps" SNGs that Poker Stars have (ladder system to qualify for events such as EPT, WSOP etc...) the figure goes up to $1500 for 2008 (due to exceptional exit points which reward you in cash or W$)

My average buy in is $16 and my usual limits are 0.50/1 and 1/2. In 2008 my tournament ROI was 11% with an ITM rate of 32% (too high I ought to take more risks).

I try to make on average $1.000 a month which supplements my salary which is small because I work part time. I met my target last year with $11.500 in profits (the top 4 big cashes accounted for over 50% of that), 9K in tourneys, 1K cash games and 1.5K SNG (the bulk coming from a $1.200 win in a WCOOP Step 6). My target for this year is $120K in tournament prizes and 20K profit from poker in general. Good job it's January cos I'm nowhere near it.


Keeping records is a very good thing because you always know where you stand. But even more inportant is the ability to analyse your results.

Every month, I'm able to see where I make money, where I don't, where the results are improving, where they are deteriorating so I have the possibility to change things and shape my poker to improve as a player.

This year I'm looking to try play elsewhere than on Poker Stars because it seems that's where players there are the toughest around. So I may be able to make more money where there is a greater supply of fish!!

Blunder, I appreciate all of your input, that helps me a lot on my record keeping for MTTs! I'm going to have to totally re-work the way I keep records on those this year. I play about 50/50 cash/MTTs, usually playing in 1 MTT and playing one cash game at the same time, so I'll just have to make sure to keep my hourly for cash and not include wins/losses toward MTTs in that section.

If you don't mind my asking one more question, what poker tracking system do you use?? I used the pokertracker free trail and really liked that, but they don't have a good HUD system to use while playing at the table, and that is something I really want to get. So since I haven't bought pokertracker yet I've just been keeping all my records on excel, which can be quite time consuming, but I want to find a good program that I really like and that has everything I want before I buy it...

Oh, and on the subject of switching sites...check out citypoker.com. You'll find their software is a lot less fancy than pokerstars or fulltilt, but in my experience there are a lot of fish at the $0.50/$1 PL Omaha and the $20 single table NLH SNGs. The site is part of a sports betting site called BetUS.com so there are a lot of gamblers that aren't necessarily that great at poker. I also won the trip to play in the Irish Winter Festival back in October off that site and only spend $15 to do it! Anyway, check it out and see if you like it, but I don't see you playing their MTTs cause the biggest weekly one they have is 100k.