The absolute joy of online poker is not only do you get to be in the comfort of your own chair, bed or laying out by the pool; you can easily take notes on poker players more efficiently. Not everyone has the ability with a photographic memory, so hopefully this lesson will provide you with your open source for writing your way to take notes on other poker players.
Keep It Simple
One thing I have noticed with many players when they talk about their notes, is there is just so much detail in them. You really don’t have that much time to read over or jot down every hand a player plays. Keep your notes short and keep them simple.
Shark Good Weak Fish
If you have read the Player Types Lesson identifying these players shouldn’t be as hard. It is equally important to know who the fish to sharks are at the table at any given time. As they say, if you haven’t spotted the fish in the first 30 mins of sitting down, its you.
Tight Loose Maniac
Are 3 good pieces of information. It does generally go in with the player types, as a tight player is good, but there are tight players that do play to tight and become soft which would actually classify them as weak. The tight, loose, maniac makes the grey area of the player type more defined.
ie: I would prefer to trap the weak maniac over the loose good player.
Pot Stealer
Typically if a player often opens for a bet when it is checked to them, are known as pot stealer with any random hand. Basically it is positional play, but not actually considered to me as a bluff even tho it is a bluff. I don’t mark them down as a bluffer, because I need that info when the pots are bigger, the pot stealer will generally do it on the flop, or on a turn with a small pot. I identify with PS or NOPS.
Bluffer
As I was saying, I try not to mark “bluffers” as a tag all to often, only because it actually gets me, the player in trouble. Basically with the info marked as a bluffer I might stretch my odds, or find myself dominated with a marginal hand that I probably shouldn’t have been involved in the pot to start with. The info you want for your notes is more like what they bluff with.
Their Tells
I have an Online Tell Lesson, that elaborates this subject.
What we want to mark in the note box are things like how they continuously play a certain hand based on the time it takes them to act or re-act, I like to make sure I know how they play their monster hands, such as AA, Flush or Trips, and just prefer they tell me in the chat box when they have a full house, but here is what I use.
Pause or Auto or CR (for check raise)
What Do They, Don’t They Bet
I know this lesson opened with, KISS; keep it simple stupid, but there are a few betting patterns some players fall into habit with. I want to know how they play their draw, top pair, top pair with no kicker, middle pair, low pair, and sets. Generally this falls into aggressive, solid, passive or calling station.
Button and Blinds
Some players do not defend their blinds, some players always raise from the button if action is folded around to them. In the long of things, knowing how players play out of the blinds can be the best going for them. If you know a player never defends their blinds, wouldn’t you always at least make an attempt, Blind Stealing. If they call, you know they have a little something.
