Min # hands to label an Opponent

Whether your playing live or playing online, placing your opponent into one of the fundamental four playing styles helps improve your game, and your bottom line.

With that said, without HUD software:

1.) How many hands do they have to play before you can confidently label your rivals style?

2.) How would you keep track of this information?:icon_pale

3.) In what format could/should this 'Information' be kept in?
Per player:
a.) looking for # hands seen. ( position not important )
b.) # of folds, limps, calls, raises ( multi calls/raises added together ) per hand.
c.) # of flops seen.

I know this sounds crazy, and yes I am nuts. But I am trying to build a Challenge for myself to help improve my game.

Any help in getting this little project off the ground would be greatly appreciated, and I look forward to everyone's input on this matter.

Just to clairify looking for ideas

To clairify, i'm looking for ideas, and NOT looking to gather info on players.
I am planning on playing some live tournaments soon and looking to brush up on core elements.
Again any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

All the pro's use smart phones to keep notes on players,,,technology is your friend.

terryk said:

All the pro's use smart phones to keep notes on players,,,technology is your friend.

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Without a doubt a smartphone would definitely help. This is kinda more What numbers are needed before changing gears and switching from ABC poker to player Vs. player type poker play inquiry.

It really depends on the player. It might take 3-5 orbits to figure out a player is TAG or a NIT, but 1-2 orbits to figure out that a player is LAG or a fish. I feel that it's more about the number of hands that they play. The stage of the tournament also influences how players play. Some good players are willing to take shots on marginal starting hands early in tourneys because what's 25 chips from a stack of 10000? Then when middle stages come, they tighten up and start going for smaller pots just to stack up a bit more safely.

terryk said:

All the pro's use smart phones to keep notes on players,,,technology is your friend.

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There are some good Apps that just keep track of percentage flops players see, raise etc. The higher the percentage the wider their range.

1. I think you need to see about 25 hands from a player to categorise them. Fewer hands can produce unrealistic stats due to variance in the game. Also a fair number of these hands need to result in a showdown of cards or you don't know what that player is playing with. Mucked hands don't tell you as much. This will at least let you categorise how that player is playing this game at this phase of the tourney. You probably need 10,000 or 20,000 hands for a reliable stats for general play.
2. I keep a notebook of every hand played ever. I also dedicate pages to players I run into. I will keep track of whatever noteworthy thing they do. (for freerolls, only keep track of the final 30 or so, as most of the field is so bad the stats mean nothing). I dedicate one page to each hand, and 3 pages to each player I play seriously against.
3. I keep track of how many times they put money in the pot voluntarily compared to hands dealt (VPIP), smaller numbers here are tighter and bigger numbers looser
I keep track of pre-flop raises (PFR). If this number is nearly the same as VPIP, this player is pre-flop aggressive, if it is much smaller, then maybe passive. I keep track of how many times he folds to the same move by someone else.
I keep track of how many streets post flop they raise compared to the number of opportunities. (AGG) This helps decide postflop aggression levels
I keep track of Continuation bets and folds to the same CBET and FCBET
I keep track of blind steal attempst and folds to the same. BSA and FBSA
I keep track of that players typical bet sizing for each street and note when it is different
I just added donk bets and folds to the same to the page.
I keep track of hands seen for each player and their table position - to get a sense of how wide they are playing (these can be gleaned later from the hand histories)
I keep track of behaviour relative to stack size
how many times they limped/flatted with the nuts
what kind of hands they were 3 betting with
Some players I have played with a bit have a set of 3 pages in one notebook and continuation pages in other notebooks!

It can be done without a HUD, with pencil and paper but keeping track of the little pieces adds up to several shelves of notebooks after awhile. A HUD simplifies this but then your data is susceptible to software crashes, and is localised to your harddrive. You can't drag this with you to a live event! I use the old fashioned way, although I can see why the experts use smart devices to crunch all the data. A single MTT can take a 300 + page notebook!

The amount of hands you need before labeling a player depends on the stat you are looking at. For example: VPIP converges quickly(it becomes meaningful with fewer hands) But a stat like 3bet takes a lot more hands to become meaningful.

You can label them before a hand starts based on chip size

You can label them after the first hand if they play it with a massive leak as you know they are not a pro or a reg

Generally speaking it is best to play well, tag, and then use the label in 50/50 spots

So, if you are debating whether or not to bluff, and the opponent is clearly more of a fun player with fishy style, then you can use your label to wait to bluff

Or, if it is the opposite, and you see the entire field tight, you can do a different action in that 50/50 spot

Well it is placing a player into one of the four general types initially.
Tag , lag , rock, and call station. then continuing to observe them and define their play based on current trend of # hands seen.
Tag changes to lag after major win/lose things of that nature.
I'm thinking 2 orbits of the button is extremely minimal, would more be better?

Cajin007 said:

Whether your playing live or playing online, placing your opponent into one of the fundamental four playing styles helps improve your game, and your bottom line.

With that said, without HUD software:

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You can do that online also without HUD, but with it definitely better and easier to store and collect information.

Cajin007 said:

1.) How many hands do they have to play before you can confidently label your rivals style?

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It's very different and really depends on style and experience of villain.
More balanced and experienced player is - more hands you need for putting him in some category. And usually it will be "Tight Reg" or "Loose Reg", who able to "change gears" sometimes. I would say for such kinds of player you need 300+ hands to know for sure.

However it's much more simple, when it comes to inexperienced hobby-players, whose game is so unbalanced, that you could define them after already like 50 hands (call stations, maniacs) or 100 hands Aggro-Fish, Nit.

Cajin007 said:

2.) How would you keep track of this information?:icon_pale

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Online: If don't have HUD - Notes and colorcoding. Offline: Notes in your smartphone is a great help for that. Or just try to remember player's style in your mind.

Cajin007 said:

3.) In what format could/should this 'Information' be kept in?
Per player:
a.) looking for # hands seen. ( position not important )
b.) # of folds, limps, calls, raises ( multi calls/raises added together ) per hand.
c.) # of flops seen.

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Basically two statistics are important:

1. How many hands villain played per 100.
2. How many of those hands he/she open-raised/3bet on preflop.

Limps are important too, same as total aggression pre & postflop, also stealing and bluff abilities. If villain aware of position importance. But all these characteristics are more to clarify a type of villain and should be noted after villain been categorized already.

I hope it helped a bit.

Again I would like to thank anyone and everyone who contributes to this Thread.
I think I am beginning to get a general sense of the required items needed to reasonably identify playing style of a player.
But I am still concerned with how many hands one should use ( without HUD, A.K.A. Offline ) to maintain that identification.
Also, what to do if your suddenly moved to a new table, with new players, and no history?

I'm no good at tracking players, but I also don't use a HUD. I mostly only track things that would PREVENT me from staying in a hand or being aggressive against a player. Things like:

• If they're in a hand will they call down to the river with marginal holdings?
• Do they bluff?
• Do they re-raise often?
• Do they trap?

I always have reasons to stay in a hand, so backing out of a hand or at least slowing down my betting when one of those things apply to a player helps me survive longer.

Whatever you do make sure you keep in mind a lot of players like me intentionally switch up their play throughout the game.:call2:

When I play live, I keep 3 numbers in my head about each player at the table.

• Qty of Voluntarily entered pots (depending on the level, I may gnore limps or track them separately)
• Bets/raises made (I may increase their count for all-ins or overbets)
• Qty of folds to pressure (usually excluding blinds from this).

This isn't too hard to do, but it does take some concentration as well as it forces you to really pay attention to the action. The first item can help you to define the players range. The second item can help determine a players level of aggression. The last item is fairly important as you must know who at your table folds the most.

This technique will not provide absolute data on a player, but you will find out who are the 2-3 loosest players at the table, who are the 2-3 most aggressive players at the table and who is the 1-2 players who fold the most. I do this until i am confident that the numbers are not shifting too much. I may stop for awhile to focus on other things, and then do it again when levels change or i sense that players have adjusted to the action or of course if i go to a new table.

Paying attention to showdowns to validate what your numbers were telling you is very important. The reason i started doing this is that i would form an impression of a player by watching, but when i actually had numbers i realized some players were better at flying under the radar. Give it a try and let me if it works well or not.

I would not recommend carrying this data to a new table or another session. It may take a few orbits, but it is worth seeing how the player is playing against the same field as you are, rather than how they played before.

The holy trinity of poker information [ folds, calls, raises ], and tracking them for three to four orbits at a time seems to give a reasonable initial read on the style a player is currently employing.
Should those numbers be updated per orbit, or longer?
How many orbits worth of observation should be kept for relevance?