Taking notes on players
When a player makes the transition from playing live Poker to playing in a strictly online environment there are many different changes that they might find themselves making. One of the changes that all online Poker players face is the fact that they won’t be able to physically “read” their opponent. One of the ways that online Poker players are able to compensate for this often frustrating reality is by taking notes on the players that they meet in the online environment.
To great benefit online Poker players have found that many online Poker casinos offer an area where players are able to jot down a note or two on the opponents that they regularly face. If a player doesn’t see a player for awhile, and they forget how they play the game, they can easily call up notes that they had taken on the player months prior. This gives that player an increasing edge as they face more and more people in the online environment thereby building a virtual library on each player that they face.
Players in the online Poker environment will have to sift through another player’s moves to ascertain what they are thinking and how they are reacting to a given set of circumstances. What is almost intuitive when playing another person in real life suddenly becomes much more difficult as the cards simply pop onto the screen. In a real game a player might be able to make a mental note on another player just by judging from their facial expressions or how they shift around in their seat when a certain hand is dealt to them, however, this isn’t the case in online Poker and actually forces the player to concentrate much more on the game itself.
If a player is playing in an actual Poker tournament or room, one in where the player has the opportunity to actually see their opponents, it is also a good idea to take notes on the other players. There is a certain tact involved in this process, of course, and it wouldn’t be considered good sportsmanship to yank out a notebook after the last hand of the River for example, but a few notes on the game after the players have dispersed is just good practice.
More and more prevalent in today’s tournaments are all sorts of digital recording devices. It is never a good idea to intentionally tape another’s player’s cards, but it might be a good idea to tape the player and how they play during the actual game itself. This is akin to professional sports teams taping the games to watch later. This just makes good sense. By learning from past “game” tapes a player will be able to actually see quite a lot that they will have inevitably missed while they were too busy concentrating on playing good Poker. And while they will be able to read things that other players are doing so that they can use later, they might be able to read something more importantly that they are doing that is costing them losses.
Whatever method a player chooses taking notes about their game play and the game play of others is a good way to get better fast. Remember, no one ever got to the top without doing their homework.