Keeping Player Notes

Knowledge is everything in Poker. The more knowledge you have or can obtain the better your chances of being a winning player. You certainly need the right knowledge to play the game and play it well. You, also, need knowledge about your opponents. For that reason, I’ve started keeping notes on the different players I am playing. I have always noted players to some extent with notes like, “called preflop bet with 5/6 off suit” or “plays a lot of hand, only go against him with best hand”, that type of note. I was in FlopTurnRiver forums and asked the question about keeping notes on players and I found out that my notes weren’t specific enough to really help me out. I needed more in depth information like did he call from early position (EP), middle position (MP), or late position (LP)? Was he suited or unsuited? Was he in the blinds? My old notes didn’t have enough information to really help me decide what type of a player I was leaving the notes on. I even used Poker Tracker to help me with notes on players. Some of the answers at FlopTurnRiver were pretty in depth and one noted how he developed his own type of shorthand as sometimes, depending on the Poker Room, the notes area isn’t very big. Here are a few examples of one person’s notes:

Opponent 1~raised late, 2 in, w 66>

Opponent 2~raised 4th w Ato as co reraised mp3 w 66>

Opponent 3~raised as bb w 2 in w 99>

I have started to keep better notes and I keep notes on as many people as I can even in the big Poker Rooms like PokerStars
because I have already found that I end up playing the same people quite a bit. In Titan I am starting to keep as many notes on as many people as I can because it is a smaller site and I see the same people day after day. Not that many people play Limit poker as opposed to No Limit so I am seeing a lot of the same people at Titan and my notes should help me make good decisions. I am finding that by keeping notes I am paying more attention to the game and that means more attention to the players and how they are playing.

I have already seen a couple of instances where a note on a player has help me make a winning decision on the hand being played. One such player I had pegged as tight/passive and, knowing this, I was able to raise and push him off a pot that I had nothing on. It was a scary board and I represented having a better hand than I did. Another time with the same player he raised preflop and I knew he had a good hand as he rarely did that and I folded my cards and watch him win with pocket Kings.

I may never have made those determinations if it wasn’t for keeping notes on players and remembering certain players (because of keeping notes) or rereading the notes when they show up at my table.

I had another winning session at my Limit Poker Challenge, cashing out a profit of $10.50. I am at $120 dollars now and when I reach $125, I will move up to the $1/$2 games. That will be interesting. Here is a graph of my Limit Challenge to date, after just 17 days. I plan on keeping the challenge going at Titan as things seem to be going well there and (see below) PokerStars is kicking my butt still. I just have to see if I am able to get onto the $1/$2 tables as not many people play Limit Poker at Titan.

Still getting my junk handed to me at PokerStars

I am playing good hands only to come up second best, like my Ace/Queen getting beat by Ace/King when the flop has my Queen but the King shows up on the river or when I flop a straight but I have the low end and by the river the top end fills in. What is so hard is to keep playing my cards the correct way which means raising preflop the hands that should be raised and, especially this, getting out of the hand when I am beat. I’ve dropped 1/3 of my bank roll in 4 days and it doesn’t look like it is turning around any time soon. Maybe I need to take a break from PokerStars and play some other sites. Titan has a two table SitNGo that I have played 3 times and finished in the money twice. The one time I didn't get in the money I went into the Flop with best hand but lost the race. Maybe I will play that SitNGo a few more times and give PokerStars a rest.