Note Taking

[Maiden]

I’ve been hunting around the web for a decent article on note-taking on opponents. (What to look for, how to keep track of whatever data you’re going to use, how to convert what you observe into helpful notes etc), but cant seem to find anything useful.

It’s something I’ve never really bothered with in the past, but I think it’s something I probably should be doing.

Just wondering if anyone knows of any decent articles about this, or whether people care to share their own note-taking systems?

[Ohjay]

Mine is pretty simple.
Before I have a decent amount of hands on anyone, I tend to note down how they play certain hands pre-flop.
Examples:
L K6o in MP+2 after 1 L - L = limped/limpers
R 72o in UTG+1 after UTG R - R = raiseded/raiser

When I get about 50-100 hands on anyone, I tend to note down their PT stats instead of PF hands.
Example(VPIP/PFR/AF):
16.72/2.6/1.1

Beyond that, I take notes of how they play big hands like flopped sets etc, how they play draws, and I also note down hands they play in a peculiar and odd way.
Examples:
Slowplayed set til river(flush/straight draws) - the bit in parantesis tells me what the board was like
Bet flush draw on every street, even when missed river
Donk bet PFR with BP on flop, C/R on turn, C/C on river - BP = bottom pair, C/R = check/raise, C/C = check/call


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It's not a very clean system and maybe not the fastest but it works for me.

As for articles on the matter, I'm pretty sure there is an old post somewhere on the forums talking about notetaking and it links to a really good notetaking article(one I based some of my notetaking on)

[Taardvark]

The "Killer Poker" books by John Vorhaus have a lot of discussion about note taking.

[badboywes]

[DP_Machine]

One of the things that I used to do when I was playing a couple of years ago on PokerRoom was to take notes on every player including first impressions just by watching a couple of passes of the button and even develop a short form just to make it faster to type them in.

However, when I was done, not only would I reflect back on what I did well and what I could have improved on, I clean up the notes to make it easier to understand and have a clean format. It also helps to remember the session and then be able to remember the player down the road, even without referring to the notes.

I stopped that more recently and online play in general as I'm playing a couple of tables at a time. Possibly looking into getting PokerTracker as well to assist if I decide to play a motherload of hands in the upcoming future.

[jfletcher]

I also would love to see a comprehensive discussion of this. I tend to go with stuff about what hands they will call with on the flop (call w/ any pr, etc.), what they do after their cont-bet is called on the flop, whether they'll bet their position.

The latter is very useful, because you want to know if they'll bet when you check to them, regardless of whether they have a hand.

I figure the PT stuff mostly takes care of general tightness and looseness, so I'm mostly looking for stuff about how they play postflop.