I'm a PoohBah? plus some notes on notes

[bottomset]

well I started playing online in June playing 10+1 sng's I did alright, like a lot of us I only put in $50 the first time around, busted that, and a $50 reload, 3rd time was the charm and I built upto about $300 by OCT, when I decided to play a 5+1 MTT, 1900players .. got saved by a boat on the board when allin QT vs AK

make the final table with 26k in chips(I lost 2big hands that crippled me) with 10k/20k blinds, table folded when I was in the BB, got nothing during the free round, back in the BB with 20 of my 26 in the pot this time I get AA, 2limpers + SB and surviving the hand and I got 100k .. then when 8ppl are left I go on a major heater and knock out the remaining 7players in less than 20hands twice with dominated hands... and take a 1900 payday

I cashed out it all and used the money for school, at this point I was still only playing on occasion, and pretty bad, but I placed in 2 more final tables in 5+1 MTT ...

I decide to start playing LHE for some reason, usually at 1/2 occasionally 2/4 and do decent, I had HEPFAP, TOP already but wasn't that great at application .. I was only playing about 3k hands a month, I reg here at the end of Oct, and lurked till early Dec.

I was a 17/9 player, solid preflop, but really weak postflop .. but on a good run and built my acct upto 1100 .. when my car broke down, so I was forced to withdraw 800 to fix, and decided to drop down to .5/1 starting in Jan

I also started posting more, spent a lot of time with SSHE, and improved a fair bit I played about 6k hands at .5/1 before building up enough to move to 1/2, this time around I decided to play 6max in March

I really liked the 6max game, and ran hot for 8k at the same time wising up to bonuswhoring, April was the first month I played 10k hands in a month, also my first $1000 month as well

may started with a nasty 190BB downswing at 1/2 6max which was an even mix of running bad and playing bad .. I left 1/2 for 2/4 and hit a 100BB downswing there as well, but thanks to like 4reloads was still slightly positive for the month

its also about the time of the 2/4 downswing that I got talked into playing a 25BB HU freezeout against Shillx, I was clearly outclassed and lost after 250ish hand session, Shillx was nice enough to critique my play and give some pointers about HU play, we ended up playing 3more 25BB freezeouts over the next week, I won all 3 and felt I made major improvements

this is also when toss suggested a HU tourney, and C.H.U.M.P was born, I played HU w/ 6or so 2+2ers and played 4k hands HU about 2/3rds against 2+2ers .. this I think really helped my game

I made 2/4 my main home, and actually went back to playing some fullring games, also playin 2/4 6max on stars

recently I decided to test the waters with 5/10 6max on Party, only 400hands so far but its fun, and I think I will make an effort to play at least 1hr/week there till I build my BR up to a level for a perm stay

This forum has really helped my game a lot over the past 7months

the following have really made a major impact

Entity
Shillx
DeathDonkey
BTSpider
Davelin
mmbtOne
toss
detruncate
Droolie
Grunchcan
and a bunch more

[bottomset]

as for notes, it seems micros have gotten totally away from making reads when it comes to playing hands, granted occasionally the hand will occur when you have just sat down, but a majority are just lazyiness

you won't always be able to make very accurate reads right away, but often you can get a fairly good idea of their player type pretty quick

here is bisonbison's some notes on notes post since he explains this much better than i could


It's been a while since I posted a helpful thread here in micro, and after a good long day at the 3/6 tables, I decided I'd write up a little something on the notes I take during and after play.

Right now I 4-table 3/6, and I end up seeing the same players, often good, day in and day out. At 3/6, you run into the same people more often than you do at 2/4 (or 1/2 or .5/1). The game remains the same, but as you move up, it becomes more and more important to find tables with unskilled players and adjust to the play of skilled players. To help me with this, there are 3 basic things I use:

1. PokerTracker stat profiles.
Some players here don't use pokertracker, or use it mainly to track their own play and results over time. Beyond the simple accounting and storage of hands for myself, I mainly use it to keep track of my opponents. PT makes this easier by allowing you to export stats (through the advanced export feature) and to assign icons to track player profiles. In the newest beta patch, which I recommend everyone download, you can set up different stat ranges for each icon, and have PT automatically update each player's profile to make sure they're in the right range.

MS Sunshine had a very popular post (which someone can link to) that detailed his stat standards for passive, very passive, tight, v. tight, aggro and so on. At the moment, PT provides 12 icons. I use one of these to mark 2+2ers, and 11 to sort everybody else.

Everybody gets a preflop designation and a postflop designation. If there were more icons, I'd break it down more precisely, but I've found this is pretty helpful so far. The stats I use are VP$IP (basically, pre-flop tightness), PFR (preflop aggression) and Total Aggression (not counting preflop, so it gives us a nice summary of postflop aggression).

Loose-Passives
LP-P - fish icon - Loose preflop (VP > 30). Passive preflop (PFR < 5). Passive postflop (TOT-A < 1.5).
LP-A - elephant icon - Loose preflop (VP > 30). Passive preflop (PFR < 5). Aggressive postflop (TOT-A > 1.5).
sLP-P - phone icon - slightly Loose preflop (30 > VP > 20). Passive preflop (PFR < 5). Passive postflop (TOT-A < 1.5).
sLP-A - ? icon - slightly Loose preflop (30 > VP > 20). Passive preflop (PFR < 5). Aggressive postflop (TOT-A > 1.5).

Loose-Aggressives
LA-P - dice icon - Loose preflop (VP > 30). Aggro preflop (PFR > 5). Passive postflop (TOT-A < 1.5).
LA-A - taz icon - Loose preflop (VP > 30). Aggro preflop (PFR < 5). Aggressive postflop (TOT-A > 1.5).
sLA-P - frown icon - slightly Loose preflop (30 > VP > 20). Aggro preflop (PFR > 5). Passive postflop (TOT-A < 1.5).
sLA-A - smile icon - slightly Loose preflop (30 > VP > 20). Aggro preflop (PFR > 5). Aggressive postflop (TOT-A > 1.5).

Tight-Passives
TP-P - rock icon - Tight preflop (VP < 20). Passive preflop (PFR < 5). Passive postflop (TOT-A < 1.5).
TP-A - mouse icon - Tight preflop (VP < 30). Passive preflop (PFR < 5). Aggressive postflop (TOT-A > 1.5).

Tight-Aggressives
TA-P - triangle icon - Tight preflop (VP < 20). Aggro preflop (PFR > 5). Passive postflop (TOT-A < 1).
TA-N - eagle icon - Tight preflop (VP < 20). Aggro preflop (PFR < 5). Neutral postflop (1 < TOT-A < 2).
TA-A - moneybag icon - Tight preflop (VP < 20). Aggro preflop (PFR < 5). Aggro postflop (TOT-A > 2). This is the group I am in and the group you want to be in.

I automatically assign anyone with 30 hands to these categories, and advance export notes on everyone with > 20 hands after each day's session. In the end, everyone I've played 3 orbits with has the # of hands, the icon, the 2 preflop stats and the street by street postflop aggression stats exported.

For those wondering, here are the breakdowns by group count from all my hands this year (min. 30 hands):

LP-P - 1604
LP-A - 267
sLP-P - 578
sLP-A - 231

LA-P - 948
LA-A - 538
sLA-P - 307
sLA-A - 391

TP-P - 417
TP-A - 320

TA-P - 92
TA-N - 168
TA-A - 342

2. The PT game time window.
All that exported stuff is well and good, but it's static, and you'll often want to keep running tabs on players that are new (or get a substantial number of hands) during a given session. For this, I set PT to request HHs every 5 minutes, import hand histories the moment they arrive, and keep an external game time window open at all times.

That way, I can switch the game time window to the current session quickly and make preflop decisions a lot easier. UTG raises, (I see he's not a rock so I confidently 3-bet w/TT) then see what his postflop aggression looks like to have a vague hint as to whether he'd push at me with overcards. It's not precise, but as a multi-tabler, it's really helpful.

3. Shorthand notes.
For the moment, party and it's affiliates are restricting the character count of player notes to something like 84 characters, which is not a lot. With this in mind, I'm going to tell you to ignore preflop notes. Honestly, unless he does something really interesting like not raise from blinds with AK or QQ, you're better off using your notes for postflop action where the decisions are more important. What notes you should take is up to you, but I do something like the following:

"Player made a flop bet into the preflop raiser in a multiway pot with bottom pair" becomes "F b 2 pf-r mw w/bp"

"Calls down with any part of the board" becomes "cd w/apob"

"checkraised flopped trips on turn" becomes "cr F trp T" with the possible addendum "w/o pf-r".

That way when the flop comes I can open up everyone's notes real quick and see:

"b 2 LPpf-r w/bp on prdF" - "Bet into late position preflop raiser with bottom pair on a paired flop" (note, bp meaning not trips)

or

"no b F OESD mw" - "Did not bet a flopped openended straight draw multiway."

or

"blf cr scr T flsh w/nil HU pf-r" - "bluff check-raised a scary turn flush card with nothing heads up vs. the pre-flop raiser (and probable aggressor in hand)"

-------------------------------

That's all I have to say. That's my system, feel free to use it or change it or ignore it. I just thought that the prospect of note-taking on all the people you see may seem daunting to a lot of people but it boils down to this:

Let pokertracker handle some automatic sorting and use your limited time and space to note the unusual things that your opponents do.

[dozer]

one of my favorite notes to take on players are if they are capable of making lay downs on the turn and river.

I have been playing in a lot of tight games recently and they are just as profitable as loose games IMO, except you must take notes to win. The strategy is completly opposite of loose games where ABC poker is usually enough to win.

PokerStars 1/2 Hold'em (7 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 9/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 8/images/graemlins/spade.gif.
<font color="#666666">4 folds</font>, Button calls, SB completes, Hero checks.

Flop: (3 SB) 7/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, 3/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 6/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="#0000FF">(3 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">SB bets</font>, Hero calls, Button folds.

Turn: (2.50 BB) 4/images/graemlins/heart.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">SB bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises</font>, SB folds.

Final Pot: 5.50 BB

now with out a read in this hand I would never had made this semi bluff turn raise play.