The 4 Dashboard KPIs
Tournaments, CEV, Rakeback, Profit: understanding the difference between results and performance.
Gandalf
Co-founder of Poker Sciences
Welcome to Module 2! Module 1 was fairly basic, but things are about to get more technical from here on. Let's go.
The Dashboard is the first thing you see when opening the tracker. At the top of the page, four cards summarize the essentials: the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This chapter explains what each one measures, and why one of them matters more than the others.
1. Tournaments: the foundation
The first KPI we'll cover is the Tournaments KPI, which simply shows the number of Spins played during the selected period. It's a simple but fundamental data point.
In Spins, volume is king. The more you play, the more reliable your data becomes, the more meaningful your analyses are, and if you're a winning player, the more money you make. Conversely, with too few tournaments, all other data in the tracker is just statistical noise that's hard to interpret. This is the first pillar of the Spin player, as you already know.
So, how many Spins does it take before the tracker starts showing truly useful information?
100 Spins is too few to draw any conclusion.
1,000 starts showing a trend.
2,500/5,000+ makes your data exploitable.
This doesn't happen overnight of course, it takes time, so import regularly to build a solid sample.
2. CEV: the quality of your play
CEV (Chip Expected Value) is the average number of chips you win per game. It's the most important KPI in the tracker because it measures your performance, not your result.
With your CEV, you can determine whether you're a winning or losing player, and you can evaluate your skill level compared to other players at your stake.
We won't dive into CEV theory here: we've dedicated an entire chapter of our free course to it. If the concept is new to you, start there before moving on.
You're probably wondering: what's a good CEV?
If your CEV is above 0, it means you're playing better than your opponents on average (you win more chips than you lose), which is already good. But to make money long term, you need to do significantly better.
Ideally, ask around by talking to players from your room. Otherwise, keep reading: tools will help you find the minimum CEV needed to be profitable.
No universal rule of thumb to know what a good CEV is. Reference CEV values depend on the room and format: starting stack and blind level duration change everything. No fixed number or per-stake progression works cleanly across contexts.
The only constant: the higher you climb, the more regs you face at your tables (this is the second pillar of the Spin player: the fish/reg ratio), and the more your CEV mechanically drops.
So to sum up, CEV is the KPI to watch first. If your CEV is good, you're playing well, even if your profit is temporarily negative.
3. Rakeback
The third KPI shows your rakeback. Every time you launch a Spin, the room takes a commission (the rake). Rakeback is the share of that commission the room gives back to you, as cashback, bonuses, or tickets.
The higher the stakes you play, the more rakeback impacts your profitability. At high stakes, a substantial share of regular players' earnings comes from rakeback.
Rakeback typically ranges from 0% to 5/6% of the buy-in on the best .com deals. In other words, every time you launch a 10-euro Spin, depending on your rakeback deal, you could receive between 0 and 56 cents directly as cashback. Note that rakeback mainly concerns players at 5 euros and above.
Your rakeback amount, which varies depending on your room's deal (typically tied to your play volume), is configured directly in Poker Spin Tracker. We'll see how to set it up in an upcoming chapter.
Good news: if you play on multiple rooms, Poker Spin Tracker lets you set a different rakeback for each. The tracker automatically applies the right rate based on the room where each hand was played. We'll come back to this later.
4. Profit: the bottom line
The fourth KPI shows your profit in currency, rakeback included. It's the number everyone cares about, but it's also the most misleading over a small sample.
Profit is heavily affected by two sources of variance in particular:
- All-in luck: the cards that hit the board
- Multiplier luck: the jackpots you receive
A good player can lose money over 500 Spins simply because they didn't hit the right multipliers. The reverse is also true: an average player can be a big winner thanks to a lucky x25 they happened to get. This is why profit alone is not a reliable indicator of your skill level.
This KPI is clickable: clicking it cycles through four different profit modes (Profit, Effective EV Profit, EV Profit, EV Multi Profit). Each mode removes part of the variance. This is the topic of the next chapter.
Key takeaways
You now know the four KPIs that summarize your activity on the Dashboard. The essential distinction: CEV measures how you played (performance), while Profit measures how much you won (result). Over a small sample, they can tell very different stories.
• Tournaments = Spin volume. Without enough volume, all data is just noise
• CEV = your chip performance, independent of luck. The most important KPI
• Rakeback = cashback from the room. Part of your real earnings
• Profit = bottom line in currency, rakeback included. Affected by variance
