"Quick & dirty" Online RecordKeeping
One of the biggest factors that sets Internet poker apart from the live game is the ability not only to assemble large amounts of information on your opponents' (and potential future opponents') style of play, but to have that information at your fingertips as you are playing.
This is what John Vorhaus, in his excellent tome Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game, calls "having book" on other players. Vorhaus's book offers valuable advice on what kinds of information are valuable to have available for online play, but what if you're like me and don't want to burn the midnight oil every night poring through and maintaining it? Well, I've adapted Vorhaus's advice for this very purpose and am presenting it to you here, step-by-step, in what I like to call the "quick & dirty" method of recordkeeping for online play. (Note: These steps were written based on the PokerStars environment; if you play on other sites, you'll undoubtedly need to adjust the specific details accordingly.)1) For every opponent you encounter in a tournament or ring game, open the Notes feature of the site and create a brief line containing at least the date of the game and a shorthand notation for the other game information. Whatever notation you use, ring games should be clearly distinguishable from tournaments. Here are some examples of the shorthand I use:
? 03/20/2005 0.50PH = Pot-limit (P) hold'em (H) ring game with $0.50 big blinds
? 03/20/2005 10LSsg = Fixed-limit (L) seven-card stud (S) sit & go tournament (sg) with a $10 buy-in (10)
? 03/20/2005 50NH2s = No-limit (N) hold'em (H) double-shootout tournament (2s) with a $50 buy-in (50)
? 03/20/2005 200fPO8t (sat) = Pot-limit (P) Omaha (O) hi/lo (8) regular tournament (t) - freeroll with a 200-point entry fee (200f) and a satellite to a larger tournament (sat)
Once you've done this for one player, simply copy and paste this line for the others. Add a new line for each game you enter in which any particular opponent also appears. (I personally add each new line at the beginning, so that as my list grows for each opponent it appears in reverse chronological order, with the most recent game first.)
2) During the course of play, make a note underneath, or appended to the end of, the game info line of any playing patterns and tells you notice emerging from each opponent, especially plays that (a) you would not have made in their position, (b) indicate a ring-game approach when playing a tournament, or vice versa, or (c) simply strike you as unusual. If any player craves action and sees a lot of flops (in hold'em or Omaha), or seems to go on tilt easily, be sure to note that too.
3) Once your session ends, request an e-mail transcript of its hand history from the site. (If it's a tournament, and the site you play on doesn't offer hand-history transcripts by tournament, just request a transcript of your most recent hands, however many you played in that tournament.) Upon receiving the transcript, scour through it and note the following information (if you didn't already do so during play) about each of your opponents:
A) How many times each player stayed in all the way to the showdown
B) How many pots each player won without a showdown
C) Check-raising by any player (how often? how much? did it work?)
D) Each player's hole cards, when they are shown (either at showdown or sometimes after winning before showdown)
E) For tournaments: How many blind levels have gone by before each player starts regularly defending their blinds
Each of these items is a measure of one key facet of an opponent's style of play. A and B measure aggressiveness (i.e. the player's determination to take down a pot once s/he concludes that it can be done), C measures sneakiness (the check-raise being a classic slow-playing trap, and when used sparingly, also a powerful bluffing gambit - but also prone to blowing up in one's face if mis- or over-used), and D and E measure patience (or the lack thereof, to be more precise; opponents who frequently play, or defend their blinds with, marginal hole cards make for juicy targets). For D, disregard hands checked from the big blind; only consider hands for which their players paid to see the flop.
Of course there are loads of other information you can gleam from the transcripts too, but as I said, this is quick & dirty recordkeeping. If you're a dedicated, hardcore poker geek looking to build an encyclopedia of other players' games, go read Vorhaus's book. :)
4) If you uncover any juicy tidbits or patterns from this data, you may be able to add them to your site-based notes even when you're not online and/or logged into the site. PokerStars, for example, keeps all your notes on other players in a text file called Notes.txt in the C:\Program Files\PokerStars directory, meaning you can add or edit these notes offline using any old text editor. Otherwise, just jot everything down in a notebook, or put it into a spreadsheet or database, or however else you prefer to keep records. Either way, you'll be armed and ready the next time you face one or more of these players.
