[Dov]

I play mostly live. The truth is, that you start to categorize players immediately and you constantly revise your opinion of their play as you gain more knowledge of their play and you get better at the game yourself.

It is funny how some players who used to be able to crush me are now fish for me because I can see the mistakes that they are making.

This is important because you will not need to see them make every mistake, only know that they make this type of mistake which occurs with frequency x.

You need to know exactly what the mistake is anyway or you won't be able to capitalize on it. I don't think it is advantageous to say that player A is a good player, while player B is average and C is terrible.

I find it better to think along the lines of Player A hasn't cold called all night and plays pretty tight aggressive, Player B plays any ace, and Player C plays every hand to the river. I think I can sometimes bluff Player A when I miss a flop, and I'll only play good aces against B so I'll usually have him dominated, and Player C needs to be value bet all the time.

This is much closer to how I actually do it and it works well for me. It also avoids the tilt problems that can come from thoughts like: How the hell can I be losing to THIS guy?!

Hope this helped.

Dov