Player Note Taking In Poker

There are many subtle differences between offline and online poker, one of the biggest is the ability to take notes on your opponent. Although it's very much possible to take notes in a live game, it's much more common in the online environment. Despite this, most online players don't bother to make any notes at all. This means for the small percentage that do bother to take notes, they hold a sizeable information advantage over their opponents, this is especially useful against opponents you play regularly. Nearly all online cardrooms have note taking facilities built into their software.

Although there are no rules to how you interpret and document the information, there are 2 common formats for note taking, the verbose version and the abbreviated version. In order to benefit most from note taking, it's advisable to use both the verbose and abbreviated methods wherever appropriate.

The verbose method uses plain english to record pieces of information about an opponents play that will be helpful to know when you play them in the future. An example of verbose notes would look like:

Loose aggressive player, raises with a wide range of hands like small and big pairs, any 2 face cards, suited aces, chases draws all the time irrelevant of the pot odds. Constantly defends his blinds with weak hands, capable of making big bluffs, seen him reraise with just a high card on the turn and river. Very chatty player, seems to concentrate more on the chat than the game.

This method allows you to be more specific and creative in your descriptions, you can record comments an opponent might have said using the chat facility, or what you said to them on the chat facility to put them on tilt, what music they say they like or what they claim to have done last night outside the pub. Advantages of this method are that it's easy to use and understand and is quick, although it tends to be unstructured, inconsistant and messy.