It is a Cards Or Poker belief that you should be constantly evaluating your game to see where you can improve. You need to see where the holes are located so that you can stop the leaks in your game. One of the best ways to do this is with data. If you play in a brick and mortar (B&M) casino then one of the best tools you can have is a notebook to keep track your observations about play and other players. In fact, Greg Raymer the winner of the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) took copious amounts of notes that he used to help him secure his title. You can’t overestimate the importance of having something to record information in. With something as simple and inexpensive as a notebook you have no excuse not to. If you are an Internet player, a website like checkyourbets.com will make it easy to keep track of your wins and losses as well as figure your hourly rate and graph your information for you. It will provide you with hard evidence for you bottom line.

There are also several software programs out there that will allow you to import your hand histories from the online websites where you play and give you good analysis on your play. Poker Tracker is the industry leader in this type of software. There are also programs that allow you to analyze your play in real time. Poker Spy is one of my favorites for this type of program. It will analyze not only your play and give you immediate odds on the hands you are playing, but it will also analyze you opponents play and tell you if the table you are playing at is tight or lose.

Programs like these and others have begun to dominate the Internet poker landscape. Because of the heavy reliance on these programs by newbies, the online poker rooms have begun to evaluate these programs and decide if they are “fair” or not. Setting aside the “fair” question for another discussion, this means that you MUST check with the poker room you are frequenting to see what software is approved for use on their site. It isn’t worth it to lose your account over software. Poker rooms can confiscate your account and all the money in it if you break the rules, and because of the laws in the US especially there really isn’t much you have in the way of recourse. This is clearly a place where “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Be aware of the limitations.

You should look into tools like these that can give you an edge in improving your game.

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