Good morning people
.
Yesterday i finally realized how important and useful would it be for my poker learning and improving process if i had a well constructed, everlasting poker journal.

In the past i had some session notes, hand reviews notes, some sort of diary written on various files like notepad and words ones.

The truth is that i struggle maintaining a file up to date that fit my needs, and this is the reason i am sharing this topic with you all.

I know i can get great ideas from this community, perhpas someone already encountered this issue and came up with a great and well made solution , in terms of layout as well.

I do apologize for my english, i am trying to improve the foreign language as well.

Thank you in advance.

A poker journal is absolutely great! I started keeping one myself because I've always learned better by writing and I think it just helps to reinforce what you are learning. The way I have mine set up is the journal is divided into three parts essentially. Part one is for actual sessions where I write down hands I want to review, notes on players, things that confuse me that I want to add to my next study sessions. Part two is for all hand reviews, I usually have some way of connecting a hand from part one to part two so that I can refer to exact position and why I wanted to review it at any point in time outside of it being on the HUD and I'll do my hand reviews just like I normally would. Then part three is set aside for studying, and I'll usually set this up with about a page or so for everytime I add on a new topic I want to focus on, so if I think I need help with 3betting some more, I'll label a page as "3betting" with the date and then fill the next page or two with all the studying information. And then I have a pseudo part 4 thats kinda a catchall for any player notes I make during a session, videos/software/courses/books/podcasts I come across that I want to check out later that can of stuff. But again this is all my personal preference, I personally like writing and keeping detailed notes like that (kinda what I do in my field all the time) so this is like second nature for me but I would say play around with it, and find something that works best for you because if you don't feel comfortable doing it you're not gonna stick with it. Best of luck!

Originally Posted by thatguy6793

A poker journal is absolutely great! I started keeping one myself because I've always learned better by writing and I think it just helps to reinforce what you are learning. The way I have mine set up is the journal is divided into three parts essentially. Part one is for actual sessions where I write down hands I want to review, notes on players, things that confuse me that I want to add to my next study sessions. Part two is for all hand reviews, I usually have some way of connecting a hand from part one to part two so that I can refer to exact position and why I wanted to review it at any point in time outside of it being on the HUD and I'll do my hand reviews just like I normally would. Then part three is set aside for studying, and I'll usually set this up with about a page or so for everytime I add on a new topic I want to focus on, so if I think I need help with 3betting some more, I'll label a page as "3betting" with the date and then fill the next page or two with all the studying information. And then I have a pseudo part 4 thats kinda a catchall for any player notes I make during a session, videos/software/courses/books/podcasts I come across that I want to check out later that can of stuff. But again this is all my personal preference, I personally like writing and keeping detailed notes like that (kinda what I do in my field all the time) so this is like second nature for me but I would say play around with it, and find something that works best for you because if you don't feel comfortable doing it you're not gonna stick with it. Best of luck!

Thank you for your reply.
I have got one question:
do you use pen and paper or do you use some file with a particular pre defined layout?

Personally I write everything just because I know I'm not gonna remember it unless I do but I'd say honestly do whatever you find most comfortable

I usually do a quick review of past hands, either I win or lose, and try to find out what I did right, what I did wrong and see where I can improve.
There's poker tracking software out there that will make this job easier for you though.

I believe that such a diary or magazine is an ideal tool for introspection. Undoubtedly, players who regularly take similar notes and analyze them are more effective than others.