Taking Player Notes

Please help me figure out a good scheme for taking quick player notes.

• What are you noting that is not covered in the HUD?
• how detailed do you get?
• How do you go back and add a note after the session or after the player has left the table.

I have just created a color coding system for regs. Not sure if this is redundant since looking at the HUD might tell me the same but I'm looking for feedback on the scheme and other help in identifying players and their tendencies:

I go red(nit), orange(tight), yellow(tag), green(lag) and purple(maniac) to rep a range from tight to loose for all stats. This is how my HUD is set up. Example(6 max btw). For PFR 0-8 is red, 9-14 is orange, 15-20 is yellow, 21-27 is green and anything over is purple. For PT3 you actaully have to enter in 0-8.49 for one range and 8.5-14.49 otherwise youll get a lot of blank colors.

For color coding players in general I use what the site gives me so picking tables is a lot easier as that will show up when you're loking for a table. I dont need to sit at a table and wait for the HUD to come up to show me that its full of nits/tags that Ive played with before. I use the same range of colors for that too.

Great idea for a post, will be following this closely as destroying the reg's is one of my goals to get better at.

Is there a simple way in pokertracker to find the regs quickly? like by sorting by players with more than 300 hands or however many is needed? (im not v. good with pokertracker yet)


my colours for people are straight forward, currently just have my red for nits, orange for tights, yellows for those inbetween tight and loose, and green for loose... I then in the notes section write whether they are LAG's or Loose Passives, whether they have a high fold to c bet, whether they limp call a lot is a good one as i can punish these players by raising more when isolating than just the standard 4bb+1.

I also frequently mark people as loose after as little at 5 hands if i see them limp oop say 3 times in a row and i think you can mark people and think of them as loose until proven otherwise quite early on once you see fishy plays and this holds up the majority of the time!
Do you guys who use pokertracker think its better to use the pokertracker notes thing and have that on your HUD, instead of just the pokerstars notes bit or whatever?

Also fx; i dont see the point in over-complicating things by having super nits and nits, surely just nits would do the job as you can see quickly on the hud whether hes a 9/6 or a 5/4 in a matter of seconds and for the most part you're going to (hopefully) be abusing these guys anyways every chance you get.

acky100 said:

Also fx; i dont see the point in over-complicating things by having super nits and nits, surely just nits would do the job as you can see quickly on the hud whether hes a 9/6 or a 5/4 in a matter of seconds and for the most part you're going to (hopefully) be abusing these guys anyways every chance you get.

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Well, I started at Red because the color spectrum goes Red, Orange, Yellow,Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Red is danger, red is a charging bull, hence true maniacs. I would classify anyone with a PFR of 33% or higher as a maniac

Yellow is caution. LAG's require the most caution.

Orange falls between Red & Yellow on the spectrum, so that is the Aggrotards. These are LAG/SLAGs with an off the chart AF/AFq/3bet%

So far, we've been on the loose end of the spectrum and the next color is green, so what better color for a Calling Station? Loose and they pay you off like money.

Blue is moving away from the wild side so Blue = tight. Light blue = weaker blue = weak/tight. the 12/3 guys who set mine and play fit/fold.

Blue: Blue Chip Standard-TAG the most respected and successful style when done right.

Indigo. We are past TAG, and tightening up 8/7 to 11/10.

Violet, even farther away. These are the 7/6 and under super nits.

Color coding is completely up to you but as for what you should be noting, look at SD hands. What where they willing to stack with preflop? What did they 3bet? What do they flat 3bets with? Do they play small pairs in EP? Do they ever 4bet/fold? Do they cbet made hands less than TP?

WVHillbilly said:

Color coding is completely up to you but as for what you should be noting, look at SD hands. What where they willing to stack with preflop? What did they 3bet? What do they flat 3bets with? Do they play small pairs in EP? Do they ever 4bet/fold? Do they cbet made hands less than TP?

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This. These are the stats you can easily exploit and make tons of money from.

For example, you know someone calls tons of isos or 3bets but won't continue post flop without TP+ then you just found yourself a gold mine. Someone only ever flats PP's pre-flop, well you can play near perfectly against them. I actually exploited this last session, DBing a turn card I never normally would because I knew he would fold or raise his SP and that sets are hard to make.

WVHillbilly said:

Color coding is completely up to you but as for what you should be noting, look at SD hands. What where they willing to stack with preflop? What did they 3bet? What do they flat 3bets with? Do they play small pairs in EP? Do they ever 4bet/fold? Do they cbet made hands less than TP?

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so you might make notes like:

3bet A3s from CO?
Shoved JJ PF over 3bet 100bb deep
Open raised 33 from UTG.

stuff like that?

fx20736 said:

so you might make notes like:

3bet A3s from CO?
Shoved JJ PF over 3bet 100bb deep
Open raised 33 from UTG.

stuff like that?

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That's exactly what my notes look like fwiw.

Raised A3s UTG, c-bet KT2 flop, checked 9 turn, checked 3 river.

Yes they're that detailed but I play 6 tables of 6max. The above is fact and not assumption, we can then use these facts to make assumptions at later points. They are never distorted for whatever reason.

LuckyChippy said:

That's exactly what my notes look like fwiw.

Raised A3s UTG, c-bet KT2 flop, checked 9 turn, checked 3 river.

Yes they're that detailed but I play 6 tables of 6max. The above is fact and not assumption, we can then use these facts to make assumptions at later points. They are never distorted for whatever reason.

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are you doing this for regs only? I mean, what size sample do you need to start making notes on a player?

fx20736 said:

are you doing this for regs only? I mean, what size sample do you need to start making notes on a player?

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Make notes on everybody if you can but yeah if you see someone that you've played with before then be more willing to take notes as you'll be able to use them again. Not just regs though as if you have a note that a fish called 3 PSB with bottom pair then that's really valuable.

fx20736 said:

are you doing this for regs only? I mean, what size sample do you need to start making notes on a player?

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i make notes on any player if they make a strange play.
you never know when you may bump into them again and your notes will be useful.
so i dont think you need to wait till you have played x number of hands with them to take notes

I usually try to do things like:

AIPF:TT,AQ ( I don't note AA/KK/AK because that's standard but I want to know about 99-JJ, AQ etc)

EP raise: 22+

As for sample size needed? One hand. If you see something out of the ordinary for you stakes, note it if you have the chance. Now some notes will be worthless because you'll note someone open shoving J3s and he'll get busted 3 hands later never to be seen again but it's still worth taking the note. Because you never know when he'll sit down at your table again and start open shoving. If you have the note you can call even before your HUD comes up.

Well, I thought about what Acky said and revised my color scheme slightly.

Violet is now weak tight and light blue is weak loose.

So now I have

Red: Maniac:
Orange: Aggrotard: Laggish VPIP/ PFR but really high 3bet/ AF/AFq
Yellow: LAG: 18/14 -24/17
Green: Calling Station
Light Blue weak/ loose (the 25/10 crowd)
Dark Blue: TAG: 12/10 to 16/14
Indigo: Nit VPIP of 10 or less and PFR within 2 pts of VPIP.
Violet: Weak Tight: VPIP of 12 or less but PFR usually half of their VPIP.