Reads

I read Fnord's post (turned into article on the site) about table selection. I'd like a little further advice on getting reads on players. My problem with trying to get reads on people is that I spend so much time on it and try so much that I end up stressing out about not being able to write enough notes on a player or being afraid of missing something. This results in giving up on taking notes and just playing the cards. Is there any systematic approach? I'm thinking that maybe I should just play one table for a period of time until I learn how to get reads quickly and then I can expand. I was just curious if there's some sort of system you guys have that you exercise everytime you join a table and how to assess who the suckes are. I can only pick out the obvious suckers normally (if it's not me ) and usually they're out of money by the time I get a hand to play them with.

The more tables you play the harder it is to read people.
Here's how I started taking notes on people. On Party I have the hand history window open all the time. Then when I'm not playing a hand I go through the last few hands and update any notes where necessary. I'm only playing 20-25% of the hands so that is not too stressful. On Pokerstars I request hand histories every 10 hands and then do the same thing as Party but in Poker tracker.
HTH

Keep it simple.

How many hands are they playing?
How many hand are they raising?
How much of a clue do they have? Capable of bluffing?
When do they like to fold their hands when they miss?

I agree, the old addum KISS should apply to poker

KISS = Keep it simple stupid. Learn to pay attention to the things you can recall mentaly easily. As Fnord stated above.

I keep track of personally:

PFR's of opponents, are they consistant or do the raises reflect their hand.
How often I see them in hands
Are the checkers or raisers or calling stations.

From those 3 pieces of info I then make my determination on my Post flop play.

Poker Tracker will tell you most of that.

Overall competence and when they dump hands are more difficult to quantify with numbers, so I try to focus on those.

A related question.... how many hands do you need to see to get a read on someone?

I guess this is actually a pure statistics question:

If loose = V$IP > 40 and tight <20 then if player A has V$IP X in N hands when the variance drops to like 5% you probably have decent read on him.

Similarly with agression (Bets+Raises/Calls) <1.0 passive >1.6 aggressive, not sure what the variance is - but it's actually dependent on V$IP. For example, in 10 hands or so, maybe the rock on your right has called exactly one bet... his Agg level is 0, but it's not meaningful.

The other think you have to "correct for" is luck. A good player on a good run of cards will look like a LaGG! If the cards are cold, they are a rock!

I am thinking about how to incorporate this into my little tracking program, but don't have the math down yet.

The other think you have to "correct for" is luck. A good player on a good run of cards will look like a LaGG! If the cards are cold, they are a rock!

This exact situation worked to my benefit last night. I deposited $300 at Empire to take advantage of the 15% Nov Bonus...(and I have'nt played at Empire for some time now) Anyway I sat down at a $25NL table to work on clearing my raked hands and caught a run of cold cards. I saw 2 flops in about 20-25 hands, then things changed - I got a run of decent cards, not great, but I was getting a bit bored and decided to loosen my staring requirements until the 7:45 tourney at PS started....the observant ones (yes they do exist) folded left and right to my bets and raises. Most of the table limps - I raise - they fold. Someone raises early - I reraise - they all fold. Net result: left the table with about $62 and credit for about 60 raked hands....only about 120 more to go. The point is, if someone were keeping notes on me, they would have pegged me for a rock or at least very tight-passive...you would certainly have to account for bad runs/good runs somehow. I usually keep notes on not only how they seemed to play, but what cards they did play(if I know) and in what position.

I assume its safe to ask this in the 'Beginners Circle'