You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Taking Notes
peter27
Member Posts: 1,634
Hi all,
Some of the players who have been playing here for a long time will already know me, but I've always been very interested in poker and played casually for a number of years. However, as of 1st September this year, I have decided to take it much more seriously and am actually devoting time to developing my play.
Anyway, I have a query about note taking. Today is the first day where I have ever tried to take thorough notes whilst also thinking about what the opposition may have - and I found it very difficult to concentrate on both at once. I timed out on a few hands, and lost track of the post-flop play on occasion. So my question is, how do you take notes, and how do you determine what's important? I was attempting to note every open-call or open-raise at the start of the hand, but feel like I am potentially being too thorough. Example below.
As an aside; I am (probably) playing in my first ever live tournament on Thursday. I have no idea how I am going to do all this in my head .. I have a very poor memory. Tips are welcome.
Some of the players who have been playing here for a long time will already know me, but I've always been very interested in poker and played casually for a number of years. However, as of 1st September this year, I have decided to take it much more seriously and am actually devoting time to developing my play.
Anyway, I have a query about note taking. Today is the first day where I have ever tried to take thorough notes whilst also thinking about what the opposition may have - and I found it very difficult to concentrate on both at once. I timed out on a few hands, and lost track of the post-flop play on occasion. So my question is, how do you take notes, and how do you determine what's important? I was attempting to note every open-call or open-raise at the start of the hand, but feel like I am potentially being too thorough. Example below.
As an aside; I am (probably) playing in my first ever live tournament on Thursday. I have no idea how I am going to do all this in my head .. I have a very poor memory. Tips are welcome.
Comments
Yes, you are definitely being, to use your words, "too thorough".
There's no point at all going into THAT level of detail, quite apart from the fact it's neither sustainable or scalable.
Just broad player tendencies will suffice to start with.
"Tight"
"Very loose"
"Calls with any 2 pre-flop"
"Donk leads every flop".
Trying to describe every action on every street will never work.
I'm probably the last person who should offer advice, but mainly just concentrate on your own game and try and enjoy it, and when you get into a tricky spot against players, take notes of their play then. Use NOTES more as a generalisation of people's play. It's very difficult to play and take notes at the same time, you would be better off jotting notes and particularly hand id's and time on a notepad, and looking at the situation later when you're not playing...... hours of fun looking at mistakes
I'm sure better players than me will offer better advice, but I thought I'd start the ball rolling.
Good Luck, especially in your first live tourney. It will be pretty nerve racking as it was for everyone, but again, enjoy the game, play pretty tight for the first few orbits, so you see and understand what's going on, and one of the things I did in my first live tourney was, when I found out my table, i went up and had a quick word with the Dealer, and let him know it was my first live tourney, and I might need looking after a bit...... the Royal Flush I got in the first hour (sadly even before SKY Kirsty had got her camera out... just for posterity!) soon settled my nerves and got me quita a few chips to play with
2xbb rse UTg 99, then the note should be board texture, and how the hand panned out, if you have time.
If you dont have time, add the note later. You should have a hand history window open so you can quickly view the hands that are relevant, and usually , the note is more meaningful when its reached showdown.
Keep the notes short , scant and meaningful.
You could also view the whole hand history.....
here...https://www.skypoker.com/secure/account?action=GoAcctHome&skin=poker
After the session is over.
Thats where your note taking can be done without timing out and you will noticce some note worthy things that you may have missed at the table.
Rather than note the opening sizes for every level, note things like 4x opens or limps etc. 3x opens as standard at later blind levels.
I would also add a date to your note. Having a great note on someone which is 2 years old isn't as useful as a note from 2 days ago so knowing when the note was made is useful. Also if you can note how often something has occurred it is helpful. Someone may make a non standard (for them) play so we need to be careful not to have that as our standard note.
One thing to be aware of is some people don't play the same way all the time.
Then you could invest in a hundred green, yellow, orange, or red t-shirts to take to your live game and ask people to wear..?
Playing style: Loose agg, tight/competent, spew/rec, good regular etc match each with a colour to make it easy to make quick baseline adjustment if playing lots of tables, e.g spewy recreational = blue.
Adjustments:
so for blue it might be they call v wide with any pair post flop so adjustments would be something like: lower air cbet percentage, increase sizing with top end of range.
Specific hands;
Called three streets bottom pair with j2 on a42910 or something (can infer they are stationy)
led pot air on a27 r (rainbow) gave up turn (can infer they lead dry boards then check turn if weak)
Any hands in the same situation just put a x (however many times they have done something similar)
i.e pot bluffed air k4 on 27693 : pot bet bluff river x4 in no action pot
Then when you're in a close spot you can refer to the specific hand info to help decision making. At first don't adjust too much as players might do some random things in a vacuum because of tilt or some other reason, but over time if consistent with making notes trends will appear which make it alot easier to adjust and make decisions specific to oppo.
I have copious amount of notes on nearly everyone, so my job is done on Sky (except for the odd new player), until I lose them when the software changes.
Although I don't describe every action, raise size, blind level, just the relevant points from it.
I use some abbreviations that I put in a document when teaching my son Gary (Limp2Lose) about 10 years ago, when he was first learning. It will also give an indication, imo, of the "type" of notes you should be taking. We were both still learning some of the basics at the time tbh. I maybe had a couple of years head start on him, but he soon caught up.
I think he hardly uses notes now though lol, and he's a far better player than me. So I am not sure what that says. I wrote it ages ago, most are obvious, but there may be some other useful ones.
My son knows most of his opponents on Sky and has a natural instinctive metagame that seems to negate the need for notes, especially when he competes against the same players time and time again on the cash tables. However I find notes very useful, but they need to be the right notes and you may find it easier with abbreviations.
Effectively all your notes on the OP can be described using 4 characters. 3XRS (Three X raise standard) or six characters if he changes when the blinds go up. In which case 3XRSEL (3X raise standard early levels) You could also add OMR (Occasionally min raises) Now if you happened to see that the min raise was AA for example, then that would be very useful indeed or indeed, equally useful if they were suited connectors. IE what type of hand does he have when he deviates from his standard 3x play? Of course you may not always know if it doesn't go to showdown, but when it does, these "nuggets" are useful imo.
Anyway it may help, so I have attached it below:
Best of luck!
G
OOP and IP is a good abbreviation for Out Of Position and In Position, that is not on my sheet above.
A few others spring to mind like:
SBS can be used for Small Bets Strong.
WFLR can be used for "Watch for limp/raise"
WC2T can be used for "Will Check to trap"
BPBS - "Big Polarising Bets Strong"
BPBW - "Big Polarising Bets Weak"
WABD - "Will aggressively bet draw"
WCCD - Will check/call a draw"
WAPS - "Will aggressively play set"
WTWM - "Will trap with monsters"
JC3BAA - "Just called 3bet with AA"
(A good player will balance the above, but at a lower level there are often tendencies for one or the other)
Also, as some of the other guys said, I strongly recommend having coloured labels, so the basic things are really clear.
For me I use the following:
GREEN: TIGHT
YELLOW: AVERAGE
RED: AGGRO
PURPLE: Someone I know well/have a lot of experience of playing against.
Notes aren't everyone's cup of tea, but if you are "notes" orientated, the above may help as it would be impossible to write it in full. Too much time and not enough space.
Anyone recognize themselves in the list of abbreviations @StayOrGo uses?
I've never shared tables with @StayOrGo as far as I know, but I'm pretty sure he'd have me down as DSMF. Or even DSAF.
(Sees too many flops, bets too , and loses often!)