ITH Poker Forum

[andreanosa]

Hello all,

I'm new to this huge poker forum and I'd like to bring a question I've been thinking about a lot; I'm sure that a lot of posts have been edit about it, so if you can report me one or more links, please do that. Q is: what do you note down about your opponents when playing an on-line tournament? What is more important? Range, betting patterns, mistakes, other...? Cheers,

Andrea

[leofric]

Firstly welcome!!

Secondly it can be difficult making notes in MTTs since there are so many factors going on that you need to be specific about your note.

For example if someone open raises all in with a hand like QJo then it may not be significant if they did this with only 8xBBs

Whereas if at the first level someone 4/5 all in preflop with QJ then it probably is

Betting patterns can be useful though - if they min bet do they always seem to do this with no hand or is it a slowplay of a monster. Players do tend to be more consistent on this.

Generally I'm not too good at this though - I tend to characterise players as weak or strong - often correctly but then with no great note as to why I thought this!

[andreanosa]

Thank you for your answer; some top player (LIndgren for instance) says clearly that the most notes are specific, the best is, and I agree - that's why I've been thinking about it a lot. I believe that distinguishing between weak and strong is good and useful when we take a decision (whether to limp in a pot or not for instance), but we need more!

Andrea

[Outlier]

I've looked at the book only briefly but Harrington's recent book "Harrington on Online Cash Games; 6-Max No-Limit Hold 'em" has a whole chapter on note taking while playing online. He gives useful abbreviations/acronyms as well as # of good things to write down while playing. it's definitely worth a look.

[blah730235]

I usually break down note taking into a two step process. Works well for me at least...

Step #1 Is to categorize players that you know nothing about. Basically when you first sit down at a table and haven't played a single hand against any opponent your goal should be to profile them. Are they a fish, nit, maniac, tight-aggresive, loose-aggresive, etc etc. My goal is to get a feel for their general playing style.

I don't shoot to be 100% accurate with my profiles. If I see someone open-limp 73o under the gun I label them a fish. Sure it could have been some tight-aggresive whom just happened to misclicked but I don't care because the chances that i'm wrong are pretty low.

Further more I prioritize profiling the players directly to my left and right since I will be playing the most hands against them. If I have several tables open at once and have to choose which players to watch play out a hand it's the ones to my direct left/right.

Also I'm not looking for fine details such as how often they cbet on dry boards. You should be paying attention to stuff like this AFTER every villain at your table is profiled imo. I'm looking to make big general adjustments based on a guesstimate of their playing style. What if any are the general weaknesses in their game?



Step #2 is fine-tuning the reads. So we know the player sitting next to us plays a pretty tight-aggresive game. Now how does he play his mosters/draws/bluff catchers/air? Does he play more/less aggresive in 3bet pots? Does he adjust based on board texture? Now that we know our villain is tight-aggressive a hand where he triple barrel bluffs with 76s from the button actually has some context.




I suspect online tourney players spend a majority of their time in step #1. Since you get whisked from table to table so frequently you generally don't have enough time to really dig into step 2.