Taking notes of players in online poker

Professional live poker players use pencil and paper to write notes about their adversaries and, in online poker, taking notes is even easier, you just have to right-click an opponent and write down a note about him.

Then, what is it important to write about the players?

First of all, it’s best that you write your impression of his PokerStars gameplay: whether he is clueless or a good player. Such notes (for example, noting that an adversary is particularly good) might be useful days, months or even a year after that, when you will meet this player again, giving you an idea about how to handle this player.

Another important piece of information is whether the player is a tight or a loose player. Tight players are players who only play the very good hands, so they will often not reach the flop. In contrast, the loose players are those who will play more hands than most other opponents. For each of these players there is a different strategy and you need to know how they are before unfoiling their strategy.

In addition to the tight/loose classification, you can add more. For instance, there are ‘maniacs’, who will bet every kind of hands and will try to bluff you, or there are aggressive players, who will raise the bet, but only when they something, anything of value. Other kinds of players include the ‘solid’ players, who play a solid poker, betting when they have good hands and folding when they have weak hands. The ‘callers’ are kind of players who never raise, but they simply call your bet.

These combined types of players can tell you a lot about what strategy to use. For example, when a Tight/Solid raises or calls, you should know that it’s a warning sign, because he could have a great hand, but when a Loose/Caller calls you, you shouldn’t be afraid, because he could do that about anything.

You can also mark other PokerStars.net attributes, for instance, the Blind Stealers, who, when in late position, will try to steal the blinds by raising, if no one else had raised before or called before. Also important should be to note the major bluffers, people who use this technique often.

You could also write which hands will keep each player from before the flop, which they will raise and for which they will call. If they have a consistent gameplay, that might be very useful.