Taking Notes in Your Texas Holdem Game

In recent years the average Texas Holdem game, be it in a tournament format or a cash game, has become much tougher due to the sheer amount of information available to both recreational players and professionals alike. The internet is full of excellent forums and training sites, whilst offline there are dozens of books that can help transform a player's Texas Holdem game.

One way that a player can improve their Texas Holdem game is to take notes on their opponents whilst they are playing poker, either online or in the live arena. There are many poker players who literally have notebooks full of notes about players they have faced in their most recent Texas Holdem game, notes that they can use to their advantage should they face the same player at the felt on a different occasion.

Hopefully this article will help aspiring players to improve their note taking when playing in a Texas Holdem game so that they only spend time writing observations that matter and can therefore spend more time and energy in playing this amazing game!

Observing a typical Texas Holdem Poker game

This author knows of poker players who ritually use the old fashioned method of pen and paper to take notes, even when playing their usual Texas Holdem poker game online! This is their choice but by using the excellent note taking facility on Ladbrokes Poker they would be able to instantly see who they had notes on if they sat in their Texas Holdem poker game or any other format for that matter.

A player will only be able to take detailed notes if they are prepared to observe their opponents whilst they go about their business in a Texas Holdem poker game. They should start with the basics and then gradually build up so note whether a player is loose or tight and then add to it. Does the player in question play aggressively both pre-flop and post-flop or just one of them? How does a particular player play their draws? How often do they check-raise and do they do so on certain board textures? Basically anything that could help if they meet again in a Texas Holdem poker game.

One major tip this author would give to those starting off taking notes on players is to put in brackets next to the information the game, stakes and date the information was written. I have personally come up against players I have had solid notes on only to discover that they were for a different Texas Holdem game such as heads-up cash when I was playing full ring SNG. Having wrong information is worse than having none at all!