Notes Hindering Your Play?

[Skip Brutale]

Maybe I just take bad notes or aproach it wrong but whenever I start taking notes, I always seem to screw myself over when attempting to use them.

For instance I'll see someone slowplay trips and I'll note that. Then in another hand they'll come out betting at me and I'll be like well he likes to slowplay so I will re-bluff. He'll then call and lead half-pot on the turn. From the notes I can tell he's a fish and this is a fishy kind of bluff so I raise again, eventually I find out he has top pair 10 kicker.

This type of thing always happens to me whenever I try to take notes and tailor my play to my opponent. I do much better just playing a generic solid game.

Any hints on what I may be doing wrong, tips on how to better improve my notetaking and play using it?

[Newt_Buggs]

I can recognize two problems with your post. First, in my experience one noted hand is never enough for me to make a solid read on someone. I usually wont play off of my notes in a particular instance unless I have seen them react the same way repeatedly in the same situation in previous hands. Also, in the specific example you give you aren't realizing that any competant player is usually going to be playing trips differently than top pair. In this hand, him betting into you only indicated that he didn't have a set; bottom two pair, a draw, or in this case top pair are all still very likely. Try to note on how someone plays their sets, pairs, two pairs, draws, and how they bluff before you begin to play specifically off of notes. I'm curious though on how others use notes.

[The Yugoslavian]

I use my notes for silly things.

Like 'this guy is paranoid that the poker gods are out to get him.'

or

'Holy crap is this guy good. Run! Run! Faster!'

or

'will fold for a sandwich'

But most of the time I don't write notes on players unless I see some big errors that I feel I can directly exploit in the future (of course, a lot of the time they are gone from the table at this point).

Yugoslav

[KidNapster]

You need to take into account how many hands you've seen from the player, not just how they played a SINGLE hand.