One very helpful tool that many online poker sites provide is the ability to take notes on other players. This lets you jot down quick observations/thoughts on each player at the table so you can use the info for future reference.
Unfortunately, the problem that many beginning poker players run into here is not knowing exactly what to write down. Furthermore, when they do write something down, they miss a lot of the action because it takes so long. So the idea is that you want to be informative, yet quick while taking your notes.
This being said, it’s important to categorize notes for each player into preflop and postflop information. In addition to this, it’s also good to keep track of certain actions each player has made with various hands to help define hand ranges. For example:
Preflop Seat 1 – villain limped UTG with KK.
Postflop Seat 1 – villain check-raised with flopped set.
Now this might be a simple example, but you can still get the idea on what important notes to take on opponents. It also helps tremendously in the speed department if you can abbreviate certain words to save time. Taking the aforementioned examples, you could write PF 1 – villain limped UTG w/ AQ. Obviously you don’t have to do exactly the same thing as mentioned here, but as long as you can understand your abbreviations, shortening words keeps you from missing action.
Looking at things from a broad perspective, you should take notes on anything that you think could be of use later. Contrast this to the more generalized note taking strategies some players use such as:
Player Seat 1 – Loose-aggressive
Player Seat 2 – Weak-passive
While this might help out a tiny bit, it doesn’t really give you any actions that will shape hand ranges. So make sure that your online poker notes are somewhat detailed – even when you’re trying to keep things brief.
