Note Taking

I confess to not being very good at this and rely a lot on my HUD for villian reads.

My question is how important are notes and what sort of thing should I be looking at? Hands that are showndown? betting patterns?

Is this something that can be done as you go or do you make notes retrospectively. My point is: against a villain who you rarely see is it a waste of time takingnotes or should I go to PT3 sort by the players I have the most hands on, anlyase thier play and make notes from that?

The HUD will tell you a lot but notes will tell you quickly even more specifics. I am not great with note taking either I will confess. I have gotten better with at least making notes about any players hand that i see at showdwown. This will give us more information about how they played the hand and what they did at each street. Min requirement for me these days.

notes are very important, as well as pt3, the best notes i've taking are notes on if players limp or raise and from what positions. This is very helpfull if a player always raises(playing with online for hour) and all of sudden they limp UG, i know they probably have AA, if they always limp and fold to a raise this is helpfull info as well, as some limp but want call a raise, out of position. Another is if player always checks-folds=always bets! Another if player underbets pots with strong hands, this allows you to draw and break players(these are the ones who complain they cant win with aces). 1bullet bluffers, an opp raised preflop, fire contin/bet, and will only bet the turn if they have something, otherwise they check(dont get it confused with a super tight opp who slows down with toptop) these are opps you seen do this and ckfolds the turn, or shows down a weak holding or overs. The most important note is if the bets vary, low bet vs big bets, watch opp they either raise big with QT and low with AA or big with AA and low with QT(must decipher some info here if opp raised more cause of limpers, or folds to them on button etc...)

Yeah, crazy important topic. Notes do a couple things for me.

1. They really keep my head in a session. When I commit to note-taking, I'm not going to be browsing, watching a game, etc. My mind is on my games.

2. You can really start to hone in on player's strategies. There are a ton of things that are really valuable information. What's a players donking range? What types of draws do they play fast in and out of position? What types of hands do they value bet in and out of position on different textures? Do they double barrel middle pair type hands in and out of position? On and on. I'll take good notes over stats every day of the week.

I find taking notes a lot of fun actually. Like QTip said, it keeps you in the game. When I find that I stop taking notes it usually means I have to end my session.

This note taking thing is a good way to stay focused and it is easy to do it on the web where most poker sites have note taking facilities. Make a record of things like your opponents’ starting hands and where they play them from; whether they limp in a lot or always come in with a raise and, if so, the size of the raise. This will avoid you being distracted by other things like chats, emails, tv and the internet...

Just a note (see what I did there) - try and make sure your notes tell you reads on players, not just random stories from hands.

e.g. "raised to 0.12c pre with TdTc, bet 20c on Ad4c3s, had one caller (fish), bet 40c on turn, etc etc etc"

no good

Much better would be something like:

"raises river bets with sets on wet boards"
"hero calls river with second pair vs tight player's overbet"

etc

It's hard to do and I'm still learning but so much easier than wading through 4 or 5 hands to find useful info when the time bank is running down

When I first started taking notes they where very vague. Now when I take notes they include what limits we were playing, how much the buy in was, what position they made the play from and a few others. I never knew how important they were until I ran into someone I had a note on before and it helped me realize what he was playing. Taking notes is important especially online. Take notes like you was in school they do help.

Nice. Also, it's good to develop little acronyms to save time. For example, the suits on that flop are insignificant, so I'd just type A43r. r stands for rainbow. I use dst often for "doesn't seem to" when I've only seen something once or twice. I do like c/riocb for"check raise instead of cbet". Lots of little time saving things.

If have the patience to do it rigorously it will help you save you time trying to figure out the player style if he play agaisnt you again.
I just do it when I see a bad player just to be sure that next time he is around he is the source of my income.

Just getting back into playing after a period of inactivity and no real desire to play, so starting to play sngs again for a while and my first thing I do is check the players to see who mass tables and mark them then start trying to asign players as players I want in all my games (green) and players who I dont (red) think I have done 1 red so far lol. This just gets me it a mindset to see how people are playing then I can start noting down what they play and how.

I allways take notes about plays, hands, how good or bad player is, specially agressive players and their bluffs, stupid players an their stupid calls, etc...