Tips on Player Note Taking

Whenever playing online poker, it is always important to be very observant of the other players at the table, to identify what particular poker playing style they may play. In addition to know their style, it can be helpful to get a better idea of your opponents tendencies, to know how they play in certain situations. Especially in the game of No Limit Texas Holdem, it is vital that you are able to play your opponent and not just your own cards.

Therefore you should always try and take player notes on your opponents because it will undoubtedly influence important decisions you will be required to make in the future, especially if you are playing against the same regulars on a consistent basis.

Most of the leading online poker rooms will have the note taking or tag feature of being able to assign notes to individual players at the table. Usually when you take a note the player will be tagged with a color so you will know that you left a note on the player. Keep in mind that player notes are usually not stored on the poker room’s server so you will want to keep a backup of your player notes in case you have an unexpected computer failure.

By now you should be aware of the importance of taking player notes on your opponents, but I think that it is important to try and keep your player notes as simple as possible, because if and when you have to fall back on them in game, you don’t have a lot of time to make sense of the note.

But what exactly should you be taking notes of on your opponents? Identifying playing style would be one of the first important pieces of the puzzle you want to figure out. So once you get a feeling of whether an opponent is Tight-Aggressive, Tight-Passive, Loose-Aggressive, Loose-Passive, make sure to leave a note. But this information in itself doesn’t tell you a great deal about someones play.

You may know that a player is tight and doesn’t play too many hands pre flop, but what do you know about their post flop play. It can be very useful to know important things like if the player will bet/raise draws? For example, if you have a player note which tells you that the opponent doesn’t raise flush draws, if you happen to be involved in a hand with him and he does raise your continuation bet, you can be pretty confident he has a strong hand like a set instead of being on a draw.

Similarly, do you know if the opponent overplays top pair hands? If you have a note on an opponent which tells you that they will stack off with top pair top kicker on scary boards, you know you can going to bet aggressively when holding a monster rather than slowplaying to sucker them in.

What if you are playing against a 3bet maniac? If you have a note on him to suggest he is 3betting light with suited aces, you will know how to react to his 3bets in the future.

Player notes are a simple and effective way to know more about your opponents and in a game of mis information where you don’t know your opponents hole cards, this information is immensely valuable.

Hopefully this article provided a good foundation for player note taking. Keep in mind that even if you are multi-tabling you should take advantage of the note taking feature, just stick with leaving a simple and easy to understand note which isn’t time consuming at all.

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