Originally Posted by synthesist

Taking and Using Notes For Fun & Profit When Playing Poker Online
by Synthesist
If you could read your cyber opponents’ minds when you are playing poker online that would be a tremendous advantage, right? If you know in advance how that person acts or reacts in certain game situations you could prepare for his or her plays and gambits and either make some money or save some money (which is just as good to my way of thinking by the way). So, how do you learn to out-think your opposition in the blink of an eye? One way is to use notes.

One of the things I like most about playing poker online is that you can jot down notes/thoughts/observations about the opponents you encounter out there in cyberspace. You can take some time and scout out a site, just lurking around and hanging out, watching people play. It costs nothing to do except some time. Maybe you’ll be smart enough to record your impressions of what it’s like at that site, how the site feels, how the interface works, anything unique or problematic that you notice, what kind of play is taking place there and so on. Eventually, if you play at the same site frequently you will begin to build quite a database about that site and its denizens. This takes time and effort. It’s an investment. As time passes this data-gathering investment will pay off big for you, because poker is a game of incomplete information. The more gaps in your knowledge you can chink up, the more money you will win as time passes.

Here’s an actual example of how notes can be used as a weapon. I persuaded a friend, who I play live with, to give online poker a try. He was a little edgy about the whole online thing. No tells to observe, no people talking, so many missing things that he was used to gathering information from. I told him not to worry, just to do it, and he’d understand what I meant about there being lots of information available if he could just learn to see it and use it. He signed up and deposited some money at a popular gaming site that I’ve played at for a long time and have a lot of players’ notes recorded on (by the way my notes file for that site resides in the site’s folder on MY machine’s hard drive). To get him started quickly I gave him a copy of my notes file (because, hey, he’s my buddy and I want him to win), which in my case is called, synthesist.ini. He replaced his empty notes file with mine by renaming mine to hisname.ini. He then began to play at that site, trying out the $0.01/$0.02 ring table games for a while, then a couple of freerolls, some cheap sit n goes and, eventually, he entered a $5 +$0.50 tournament with 200+ people in the tournament. He was doing well after the first break with a chip count well above average, when the chipleader got moved to his table and as luck would have it seated directly to his right. He was outchipped by this guy about 2 to 1. Then he noticed that I had notes on this fellow. My notes said:

4 – FISHY Maniac chaser. Plays any blackjack hand HARD. Can’t lay down an Ace to save his life (especially a suited Ace), will go all the way to the river with it. Likes to make a BIG pre-flop bet then rapidly follow up with a pot-sized bet after the flop no matter what he is playing. Wait this guy out then bust him with a premium hand by raising him pre-flop and then again on the flop if he is dumb enough to bet into you when you have a hand. I busted him hard, out of a big blind, with T5 Spades when the flop was A T 5 (a hand he wasn’t expecting me to ever play. NEVER EVER).
He hates shorthanded ring tables. Afraid to play me H2H. Doesn’t understand that the REAL tournament money comes when the final table gets short.
Hands shown: K7s, T9, AKo, A6o, JJ, 76s, KQs, 33, A5s
My friend read my notes and, sure enough, the guy came out betting HARD one hand when my pal had QQ pockets. He called the large pre-flop bet the fellow made and when the guy raised the pot on the raggy flop, he re-raised him figuring the guy for 2 overcards. Then a Q fell on the turn. “Time to die,” my friend said he thought to himself. Sure enough, bully that he is, the guy went all-in. The river was no help to either of them and my friend doubled up. This guy then proceeded to tilt and went out in 3 hands. No rocket science in my friend’s betting but knowing the guy’s style made his bets more confident. Knowledge is power in poker.

Sooooooooooooooo, you ask what kind of notes should you be taking? Well, that depends on your unique style of play. I play kind of tight so I have time to jot things down. Some things I like to note, when I notice them, are:

Rating: My personal subjective take of a player on a scale of 0-9. 0 being a complete newbie, 4/5 being your average okay player and 9 being a KILLER, someone not to mess around with if you don’t have to. These ratings evolve over time as I gather more insight into a given person’s play.
Style: We all know about the style grid made famous by Psychologist, Dr. Alan N. Schoonmaker in his book, The Psychology of Poker; Tight/Passive, Tight/Aggressive, Loose/Passive, Loose/Aggressive. Here are a few of my own one-word stylistic names and the definitions I have for them including some the good Doctor missed:
Loose - (Fishy <:{{{>-<, Chaser, Rag-hag) Calls with any 2 cards. Has seen Gus Hansen do it on TV and win millions, so why not? See Prey below.
Rock/Tight - Patient. Waits and waits and waits and waits and waits, then bets and everyone folds. Hates to go to a showdown.
Passive/Calling Station - (Never, ever raises anything) Happily calls to the river then folds to a BIG river bet. Not smart enough to be scared off by a “DANGEROUS” board (one that shows straight, flush or full-house possibilities when coupled with how people are betting) just keeps on calling and calling and calling.
Aggressive - (Seems to raise rather than just calling) Always raises if he or she is going to see the flop.
Wizard – (Luckier than the law allows) Always seems to catch the cards, as if he conjures them out of thin air.
Maniac - (Berserker) Has way too much money and just doesn’t care.
Chatty Cathy/Wally Whiner - (Too busy typing in the chat box to pay attention to the table.). Has to educate everyone at the table with his or her encyclopedic knowledge of poker, mathematics, statistics, and current events while losing slowly and steadily. God help you if you put a bad beat on him or her. You will hear about it forever.
Prey or <:{{{{>-< - (Plays for fun till he/she loses the $$$ he or she came in with then leaves). Hunt for these people.
Pro/Shark - (Practicing on the smaller fish) Plays $0.05/$0.10 or $0.10/$0.20 NL for fun.
Confusing - (Someone whose style is erratic and needs to be observed to ferret out what they are up to).
Betting style: Consistent and predictable? Variable based on their hand’s strength? Pay attention to this one -> Bets small/medium pocket pairs like they are AA or KK or AKs.
Games played: Where and when they play. Days or nights or weekends (Where does he or she live? If it’s early morning or late evening they may be tired and vulnerable). What sites do they play at? (Do they have other screen names at those sites?) Do they hang out with the same players frequently (This is worth paying attention to for obvious reasons)? What games they play: Ring (What stakes normally?), Tournaments (Type: normal, re-buys, headhunters, H2Hs, sit n goes, satellites to bigger tournaments, Live?).
Techniques/Tricks used: Slowplayer, Checkraiser, Bluffer, Chaser, All-in out of position with a small/medium PP, Sneaky (Let’s you kill yourself when he has a monster), plays 2nd best hand no matter what, plays rags like Gus Hansen, Time? Does this person consistently take a lot of time to make decisions or does he or she vary his or her response time? Do they try to annoy people by taking too much time or slow rolling their hand? Do they use the auto-play buttons?
Tells: Anything unique or unusual that I notice about this particular person. Examples: Plays multiple tables/sites and uses auto-play buttons to check, raise and fold. Calls quickly when on a draw but takes his time thinking about pairs. Does he or she chat until he or she gets a big hand and then shut up suddenly? Think about it…Not smart enough to be scared off by a “DANGEROUS” board (one that shows straight, flush or full-house possibilities when coupled with how people are betting). Tiltable? If I notice them tilting I jot the reason why for future reference. Do they get abusive when on tilt? Can they be goaded?
Stackplay: Bully (wants to build a stack in a hurry, at the start of a tournament, so he can push people around with it. I relate to this style a lot personally), Hit-and-Runner (leaves immediately after winning a good pot on a ring table). There are others but you get the idea here.
You can develop all kinds of cryptic notes that only you can read and understand. That’s just fine. There is no right or wrong amount of information to gather and there are no rules and regulations to adhere to. It just has to feel good to you and be useful to you and nobody else. Jon Vorhaus devotes an entire chapter to what he, euphemistically, calls Data Management in his book, Killer Online Poker. He obviously has a lot more time and energy to spend on his note-taking than I do because he mentions things that he observes that are beyond my ken. When I am playing I am too busy to notice some of those things maybe I will evolve and develop that skill. Some people go so far as to use a second PC or laptop to take their notes on, others use a digital voice recorder to capture their impressions and transcribe them later because their hands are busy with the 3 ring tables and the tournament they are playing at. Now that is multi-tasking!

Anyway, once you have compiled useful notes it’s important to realize that people can and do change. These notes have a half-life. Some people work at their game just like you do. They improve. They read books. They watch instructional DVDs or poker on TV. They have good and bad days. Someone else may be playing using their screen name and account (this will drive you nuts!). So your notes are NOT the 10 Commandments or the Bible. They are not cast in stone. They do give you a starting point and a tremendous edge when you are playing someone you don’t see very often but who you’ve scouted out previously and taken the time to record impressions of. Hopefully your notes about them are still valid. That is where notes can make all the difference. The people you see all the time are fresh in your mind…but someone you rarely see, but have notes on, well, you are locked and loaded for that person and ready when they try to pull something on you and you have a hand too!

I also neglected to mention that most gaming site’s note-taking utilities are encrypted and only usable on their site. That is a bad thing. You do all this work and then figure out that you can’t use the information anywhere but at BillyBob’s Online Poka Parlor and Whoopee Emporium. Not good. What can I say? Complain to them but don’t expect to get any satisfaction.

There are also services out there on the Internet that do the note-taking for you on some of the big sites like Party Poker, PokerStars, UltimateBet and others. They offer this information packaged in a variety of ways, depending on what games and limits you play, and what you think you need. The ones I’ve researched sell this data on a monthly subscription basis, claiming that you’ll make the $20+ a month that they charge back in a few hours. Interesting idea, I plan to explore these services further and will report back on them in the future.

This article is directed primarily at taking notes on other players but studying and refining your own play is of paramount importance. Using tools like Poker Tracker and other analytical software to evaluate your play can highlight holes and leaks in your own game. That is another topic for a future article.

You ask what I use myself? Well, with some world-class programming help, I’ve come up with a way around the site-specific portability problem but that is also a topic for another article if the programmer agrees to sharing what was developed. Perhaps we will interview him.

May all the flops hit your hand hard.

Originally Posted by Les_worm

Now thats how you get your WPP up!

Originally Posted by dwarfman

So is quoting this post!! You litte cheat Les_worm