Measuring and examining your results will go a long way towards helping you become a better poker player regardless of whether your playing small single table tournaments or major multi table events. It is important to know how you are performing for you to know what if any adjustments are required. By maintaining a long term database of results you will be able to identify small changes that increase your profit margins... are you finishing in the money frequently but not finishing in first often? Are you rarely cashing but when you do you generally win? Are you doing neither and losing money? These are important things to know. Don't let your play be determined by what you "think" is happening, track it and know for sure.
There are free options available to you. I recommend this spread sheet put together by some friendly twoplustwo'ers. It is a Microsoft excel spreadsheet specifically designed to track single table poker tournament results. It will provide all the statistics you need as long as you regularly input your results. And if you later decide to convert to poker tracker it has built in functionality to import/export info between the two. PokerTracker is definitely the most robust solution for tracking results, some players do not play enough to justify spending the 50$, if that's you the spread sheet should be fine.
If you are playing the larger multi-table tournaments you should definitely be investing in poker tracker. In the big events you will see that many of the same players compete week after week, by maintaining a database you will not only gain insights into your own playing habits but those of your opponents as well. This information can definitely help you improve your returns as you will know which players to avoid and which players to try and isolate. We recommend a number of poker tools to improve your play and make life a little easier in general. Check them out.
