How to Track your Rakeback for SNG and MTTs by Hand, which you can then compare to your daily automatic rakeback tracking at RakeVIP.

Tracking your total rakeback and hourly rakeback is important. Tracking everything in poker is critical to being successful and very easy to do. If you don’t have a poker tool available to do it for you, I find doing it by hand, with a pencil and paper is the most accurate and least time consuming. After tracking it by hand, personally I like to enter it into the excel program I created to analyze the data. Or you can total it up and analyze by hand.

Getting Started:

1. Purchase a Notebook or Journal, something with rows and at least 6 inches wide, preferably wider. You can get a different notebook for each Poker Room you play on or just use one.

2. The first page will state if this journal is a continuation of another journal. If yes, state where the previous tracking information can be found. If it is your first journal, label what Poker Room(s) and Username(s) that will be tracked. Maybe list your contact information in case you lose it.

3. Determine when you will start and end your days. Most people will go by 12:00am to 11:59 pm based on when the game starts. However, my prime playing time is from 8pm to 3am, and I don’t like to switch days in mid-session, so I use 6:00am to 5:59am. In my journal Friday games tracked will usually start at around 8:00pm Friday and go to 3:00am Saturday Morning.


Daily Manual Rakeback Tracking Steps:

1. Always start off with the Day of the Week and the Date. (i.e. Friday, August 8th) Having both will help to minimize mistakes. It also helps with summary tracking, especially if you want to see which day of the week is most/least profitable for you. This will always be your Daily Header. If it is the very first journal entry ever, also include the year.

2. Include the Starting Balance in your account on the Daily Header row. This is optional, since you will be able to easily access the ending balance from the day before. It is important that the previous day’s ending balance and today’s starting balance are always the exact same. Any changes need to be credited to a certain day.

3. Leave a space or two before the Daily Header row, so it is easy to see the break from day to day. I never leave one after the header row.

4. In the first row below the Daily Header, you will log your first activity of the day. That will usually be a sng or mtt, but it could also include a withdrawl, deposit, transfer, bonus, or anything that affects your Daily account balance.

5. If it is a sng/mtt, at the far left margin, left to right, write down buy-in plus fee, speed of tourney or any other details about structure, # of players, and start time.

6. Once you are finished, record the end time, total duration (optional), the position you finished, the prize, the profit, and finally the current balance. Some players also like to keep track of daily profit as well.

7. Finally, I will include session summary or a daily summary. Totaling up some of the info; including total time, profit, MGR, and RB, $/hr, and $RB/hr. I will also include some session notes.