To win at poker, you must study away from that table, and to do that, you need to record the hands you play so that you have the ability to analyze them later.
For online players, this is easy. You have programs like Hold’em Manager and Poker Tracker that do all the hard work for you behind the scenes.
For live players, it’s much trickier, which is why most players don’t even bother with recording the hands.
However, if you care about improving, you need to figure out a way to record hands in a manner that is both fast and efficient. Ideally, you want to put in the note in the 20 to 30 seconds between the hands, and in this article, I’ll show you how to do that.
How to Take Notes at the Table
I used to have a small notebook that I’d keep next to me at all times during the session. These days, I just use my phone and have a bunch of note files on there.
The key to efficient note-taking is using as many abbreviations as possible for longer words. You can come up with a system that works for you, but generally speaking, any word that’s longer than four letters should be shortened.
When recording a poker hand, there are four key pieces of information that you absolutely need to take note of:
- Your two cards
- Stack sizes
- Blinds
- Your position
In cash games, blinds are usually fixed, so you don’t necessarily have to write down that info for every single hand. That said, it only takes a second, and it’s pretty automatic once you get used to it.
As for the additional information, you’ll want to note any payout implications. In a tournament, that means the number of players left, whether you’re near the bubble, whether you’re approaching the final table, etc. In cash games, you want to take note of any side games, like 2-7, standup game, bomb pots, etc., as these are likely to influence the action.
Finally, if you have any reads on the opponents, you can note those quickly, like “maniac,” “passive,” “c-bets 100%.” You don’t have to be overly specific with it unless the read played an important role in your decision-making process.
Once again, you want to be as short and as efficient as possible. If you try to write an essay between two hands, you won’t be able to do it, so you’ll end up with only half of the hand recorded, or you’ll miss out on what’s going on in the next hand as you’ll be too busy writing on your phone.
An Example Note
Let’s take all these recommendations and suggestions and see what it looks like if we turn it into an actual note. So, we start with the basic information:
- Our hand (H): AsQd
- Stack size (S): 10k
- Blinds (B): 200/400 – or you can just write 400 for the big blind
- Position (P): CO or even just C
Say the lojack raises to 800, we call, and the big blind calls. We can record it as:
- L 800, I c, BB c
As you can see, we don’t have any notes on people folding in this hand. This is because it is implied. If they are not specifically mentioned in the note, that means they folded and are not relevant for the action.
Now, we continue with our note as the flop comes Ac7d4h. The lojack bets 1,000 and we call. We don’t need to write that the big blind checks, because we can presume that.
- L 1k, I c
We have no information on what the big blind did, which means that they checked and then folded, so they are no longer involved in the hand.
The turn comes Qh, lojack checks, we bet 3,000, and they call.
- I 3k, L c
The river is 6s; we move all in, and they call.
- I AI, L c, AK – the last part of the note denotes their hand, Ace-King.
So, we have all this information written down in just a few words that look like this:
- H AsQd S 10k B 400 P C
- L 800, I c, BB c
- Ac7d4h
- L 1k, I c
- Qh
- I 3k, L c
- 6s
- I AI, L c, AK
You’ll notice that there is no information about the average stack, how many players are left, or any reads. This is because we are in the early stages of a tournament, so that info is not relevant or available.
We also don’t have to worry about the pot size, as we can easily reconstruct that later as long as we have all the bets down correctly.
If you want, you can also have a separate section in your notes with all table positions and short descriptions for any specific player reads and tendencies, as well as some tips on what to do or not to do against that particular player, like:
- 1 – Maniac – don’t raise goods on f, t
- 2 –
- 3 – TAG – overfold v river bets
- 4 –
- 5 –
- 6 –
- 7 – super nit, 3b
- 8 –
With some practice, it shouldn’t take you longer than 30 seconds to complete a note. Once your session is done, you can email these back to yourself and use them to analyze your game with different poker tools and discuss them with your coaching group or your poker buddies. This is a sure way to improve your play and achieve better results.
