Player Notes Made Easy

J

josh_dei8

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I'm not real good at taking player notes an I don't get to play enough on Full Tilt or Pokerstars to get a strong enough read on players at my table.

The notes I do make are usually to long or lots of gibberish. Using Some of Phil Helmuth's defining our styles and something I found on mzonereport, I've put together something that hopefully can be helpful to many. Full Tilt uses color codes when taking player notes. Using these colors and applying each color to an animal playing syle, you will quickly know what each player is without reading through all your notes. pokerstars doesn't use color for notes, but you can just list the animal name in your notes to keep it simple. Here are the animals, with suggested color codes and a brief description of each style.

39289bluemouse.jpg

book player, tight, plays little pots
comes out fighting with cheese

39289greenelephant.jpg

passive,plays too many hands
calls often, reraise much less
hard to bluff, flush & Ace masters

39289orangelion.jpg

tricky, knows position play & odds
experience, mixes it up
online semi pro, aggressive post flop

39289yellowjackyl.jpg

maniac player, raises with lots of hands
little regard for position, pressure plays
creates victims

39289redeagle.jpg

pro player that morphs into any
other style given the situation
will scoop your stack & tilt you

39289purplemonkey.jpg

sub human player that doesn't
know any better, newbie
unbluffable, dense


You can copy and paste these animals & their descriptions to something easily accesible when you are playing until you have all styles memorized.
Here is topcat's full description of each animal and their style

The mouse plays only the top 10 hands and is very conserative, never bluffs and if he calls a raise, or reraises you watch out, he has the goods.

The lion is tough a compeditor that plays more than the top 10 hands and bluffs at the right times and sniffs out bluffs against him, he will ocassionaly go out on a limb with a semi-bluff, or a bluff, but has a good overall game.

The jackal is the loose wild player we refer to a lot as a Donk. He plays way to many hands and usually with junk cards. If he gets lucky and hits a run of good cards he can be tough, but they never last very long.

The elephant is the fairly loose calling station kind of player that is impossiable to bluff and feeds off his chips over a period of time. He isn't very sharp player and not a real threat at the table, he seems to do good against the Jackal because the Jackal keeps trying to bluff at him, to no avail.

The eagle is the guy that playes the best game consistantly, and has strategys to foil all the other animals attacks on his chips. He is profitable and confident, and can sniff out the fish in a game
 
Ronaldadio

Ronaldadio

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Very nice.

All I will do is put something like "raises if checked to in late position"

"If he bets he has a hand beware" and so on.

I think you can go too far as u say at the start of your post, so I normally stick to basics and only change the notes if I see a noticable change in what the player is doing.
 
aquadad

aquadad

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I was just thinking about notes last night as I was playing. there were 2 people at my table that I recognized from a couple of nights ago. I didn't take notes on them because I thought "what are the odds of seeing them again on a site as large as PS?" Low and behold, I've run into several repeat opponents since. so I have started taking notes. These color codes and defs. will come in handy.
 
DrumDemon

DrumDemon

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I generally start with initial impressions and then flesh them out as the game progresses. Sometimes the note will be as simple as "trapper" Other times I will write a description of how they played an entire hand. The color codes is a great feature too. I wish all sites used it.
 
R

rugby0

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Wha % of players fall into each group. Do ypur notes give you any %. that could be helpful?
 
Goodwooter

Goodwooter

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this is an excellent post...i have always had difficulty with players note...i play alot of single table sngs on the same level so i see some of the same players time and again...this will come in very helpful.

cheers
wooter
 
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