Hey Foucault –

Thanks for getting back to me – I really appreciate it and totally get what you're saying about focus on process 🙂

I'd like to explain my reasoning – perhaps there is a better way to achieve my outcomes. It is absolutely true that I'm leaking like a sieve – and I've got a lot of work to do.

So I'm looking for a way to objectively measure that I'm leaking less than I was. If I'm able to objectively measure what I'm leaking and see a reduction in leaks over time, the results will eventually catch up and my bankroll will grow.

It's really easy to look at the month I've had where my roll has dwindled significantly and think “I've made no progress”, which is really demoralising. It's ok – I'm still well within the rules of conservative bankroll management, but the results have not been awesome. I know being results orientated is totally the wrong way to think – but let's be honest, we all want to see our bankroll growing. That's the scoresheet we use to measure our progress.

At this early stage of my poker journey, I'm trying to apply what I already know from other areas of life to help keep me motivated and make it easier to learn. With an engineering background, I find it useful to think about poker in engineering terms from time to time. Engineers spend a lot of time talking about 'signal' and 'noise' – signal is useful data, noise is stuff that makes it hard to “hear” useful data.

When we talk about how well we're playing (or how much we're improving) bankroll movement is noise.

There has been so many instances where I was sure that I had my money in good only to lose – for instance all-in pre-flop AA v 32o going down to runner-runner sets. However, poker players are notorious for remembering the bad beats and forgetting the bad wins. That's why I know not to trust my recollection of how I'm running.

That's why I want a report to measure if I'm taking bad beats on chip-count – it will give me a measure of noise so that I can use that to assess my progress.

A friend has Hold 'Em manager – the races report is literally that – whenever you go to show-down it compares your chip expected value with your chip outcome for each street, aggregated by bands of probability.

For instance – if one had played 500 hands and 200 of those hands were flips – and they lost 150 of those flips the first thought one should have is “I'm running bad – I can let go of the results”, then with their mind clear the question should occur to them – “why am I flipping so much? is that a leak?”

When most people think of a report to indicate if they're running well or running poorly they're looking to say “oh look – I suck at races”, they're looking for a way to absolve themselves of bad play.  My goal is to say “yep – races suck, but dude, why are you putting yourself into so many races?”

The benefit for me for such a report is that it would help me target things to work on

Hey EllDan,

Thanks for taking the time to find that link – it isn't what I had in mind but it really helped me out – it's official – I'm a fricken mess 😛

I started off by running a report for my overall habbits, then I filtered by ante & non-ante period on one tournament type, and I posted my output in the ask the pros section.

Here is hoping they can identify a couple of areas for me to work on 🙂