Poker Bankroll Tracker vs LiveHands: Session Tracking vs Hand Tracking
You open your tracking app after a long tournament day. It says you finished up $1,200. Good session. But what about that river decision in the 4-bet pot at level 12 — the one where you weren't sure if villain was bluffing? Your session tracker doesn't know. It only knows the bottom line.
That's the core difference between session tracking and hand tracking — and it's the reason apps like Poker Bankroll Tracker and LiveHands exist for different purposes. If you're trying to figure out which one belongs on your phone, you need to understand what each tool actually captures and what you can do with that data.
For a broader look at the live poker hand tracking landscape, see our comparison of the best live poker hand tracking apps.
What Is Session Tracking?
Session tracking records the results of your poker sessions: where you played, what game and stakes, how long, and your profit or loss. Over time, it builds a picture of your bankroll trajectory — which venues are profitable, which game types produce the best hourly rate, and whether your bankroll is trending up or down.
This is what Poker Bankroll Tracker does well. It's a free app (with a Pro tier at ~€19.99/year) available on iOS, Android, and web. You log your sessions, track your bankroll across 40+ currencies, and get graphs and statistics that show your results over time. It also includes useful extras like odds calculators, an ICM deal calculator, and a public tournament calendar.
For many recreational and even serious players, session tracking is enough. If your goal is to manage your bankroll, track win rates across different games, and keep an honest record of your results, Poker Bankroll Tracker is one of the best free options available.
But session tracking has a blind spot. It tells you what happened — not why.
What Is Hand Tracking?
Hand tracking records the action inside individual hands: positions, stack sizes, bet sizes street by street, cards dealt, and the sequence of decisions each player made. It captures the raw material you need to study your actual play.
This is what LiveHands is built for. You log hands at the table in real time — between deals, using a speed-optimized interface designed around the constraint that you have roughly 30–60 seconds before the next hand starts. When the session ends, you export in PokerStars text format — the de facto standard for hand history interchange. From there, you import directly into PokerTracker 4, Holdem Manager 3, GTO Wizard, or any of the leading analysis tools that accept the format.
Hand tracking answers a different kind of question. Instead of "did I win?" it answers "did I play correctly?" That's a distinction that matters if you're studying your game.
The Key Difference: Results vs Decisions
Here's the simplest way to think about it. Session tracking is your poker accounting system. Hand tracking is your poker study system.
| Session Tracking (PBT) | Hand Tracking (LiveHands) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it records | Session results — P/L, venue, game, duration | Individual hand actions — bets, positions, cards, streets |
| What it answers | "Am I winning? Where? At what rate?" | "Am I playing correctly? Where are my leaks?" |
| Data format | Profit/loss summaries, graphs, hourly rates | Structured hand histories (PokerStars format .txt files) |
| Analysis path | In-app charts and bankroll graphs | Export to leading analysis tools (PT4, HM3, GTO Wizard, and more) |
| Best for | Bankroll management, game selection, tax records | Decision analysis, leak-finding, coaching review |
Players who only track sessions know their results but can't pinpoint what's driving those results. You might know you're losing at $2/$5 but winning at $1/$3 — session tracking tells you that. Hand tracking tells you why — maybe you're over-defending the big blind in deeper-stacked games, or your river bluff frequency drops when the pot gets big.
Where PBT Goes Deeper Than Results
Poker Bankroll Tracker is more than a simple session logger. It includes a hand replayer that supports Hold'em, Omaha, 5-Card Omaha with bomb pots, straddles, and run-it-twice. It tracks player statistics like VPIP, PFR, and 3BetPF from the hands you log inside the app. It even lets you connect with friends and watch sessions live.
These features put PBT ahead of most session trackers. It genuinely tries to cover both session-level and hand-level tracking in one app.
The limitation is on the export side. PBT's hand data stays inside PBT's world. It offers CSV export as a Pro feature for session-level data, but it doesn't generate PokerStars-format hand histories that you can import into desktop analysis software. If you want to run your live hands through the same tools you use for online hands — filtering by position, running equity analysis, checking your play against GTO solutions — you need your hand data in a format those tools accept. (For a walkthrough of that workflow, see our guide to importing live hands into PokerTracker 4, HM3, and GTO Wizard.)
Where LiveHands Goes Deeper Than Logging
LiveHands is purpose-built for one job: fast hand capture at the table with native analysis-software export. It doesn't track your bankroll, your hourly rate, or your session history. What it does is turn your live hands into structured data files that slot directly into the analysis workflow serious players already use.
That matters because online players take data-driven study for granted. Every hand goes into PokerTracker or Holdem Manager automatically. They filter by position, spot patterns across thousands of hands, and plug specific spots into solvers. Live players, meanwhile, are working from memory. Most recall only 3–5 hands clearly from sessions of 200+ hands — and even those memories start degrading within hours.
LiveHands bridges that gap. You log hands in real time, export in PokerStars format, and your live hands get the same depth of analysis your online hands have been getting all along.
Do You Need Both?
Honestly? Many serious live players will benefit from both tools — because they solve different problems.
Use Poker Bankroll Tracker to manage your bankroll, track where and how much you're playing, and keep clean records of your results. It's free, it works across iOS, Android, and web, and it's the most comprehensive session tracker available.
Use LiveHands to capture the hands that matter — the big pots, the tough spots, the decisions that keep replaying in your head on the drive home. Export them, analyze them, and turn vague memories into concrete data you can study. At $10/month, it's a fraction of what analysis software costs, and it fills the one gap those desktop tools can't: getting live hand data into the system in the first place.
Session tracking tells you how your bankroll is doing. Hand tracking tells you how your game is doing. Both are worth knowing.
Turn live play into better study. LiveHands helps you capture key hand details fast, then export clean hand histories to your analysis tools for smarter review. Try it free for 7 days.