Online poker is the one form of poker where note-taking can really pay off. That is, assuming you actually use the notes that you take, and further assuming that you took useful notes in the first place! Those are some pretty big assumptions. Most players, even those who consider themselves to be skillful, don’t take useful notes on opponents. If you aren’t going to take notes that help you with critical decisions later on, you are better off not even taking them at all.

And that would be a shame. Because the note-taking feature is largely responsible for what makes online poker so profitable to become skilled at. Now I’ll admit that if you play $.50/1.00 NL at Stars it can be a long time before you see the same player again. But if you get in the habit of taking useful notes it’s only a matter of time before they show up again someday to help you. Think of it as a large pipeline that takes a while to fill, but once it fills up you have something quite valuable.

So how do you take useful notes? Let’s start with what not to do. Don’t classify types of players in your notes. That is not useful. Calling them a fish or a maniac in no way helps you the next time you play them. Besides, they may not even be in the same mood then, or might not have had as many drinks next time. Don’t waste your time doing that.

What you want to do is record what they did in a critical situation without including any kind of bias or colorful comment. In other words, keep your notes spin-free. The reason for this is that you simply won’t appreciate your own humor or slants down the line when you need help making a critical decision. Here are some examples of useful notes:

• Called a large all-in preflop raise with AQs

• Collected bullets the whole session

• Called his stack off with one pair

• Folded & showed set to a bet w/ 4-flush on board

See the difference? No matter what frame of mind you are in next time you find one of these players in your game, you will be able to formulate strategies against them based on your notes alone. That gives you an instant edge which might otherwise take quite a while to develop.

Technorati Tags: Poker, Online poker

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 8:06 pm and is filed under strategy. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Bookmark this post: