Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick71491
Which was exactly the dilemma I faced. The closest thing I found to answering my main question was from 2004 and it still didn't touch on taking notes with pen & paper vs tablet/phone. However, I found many helpful pieces of information in this thread (I'm sure others will too) so I'm glad I did decide to post it.
Doesn't bother me if someone makes a new thread--just wasn't sure if you were aware of the others.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick71491
Still happy to hear about how others take notes effectively at the table!
I practiced some with my system (watching recorded play and pretending I was a specific player) and like it. It makes tracking players easy when you use the seats instead of positions, as whenever someone changes seats you just note something like "7 left, 3 to 7" or "new 6 OMC." I'm thinking about having a separate book for tracking players but for now I'm using one book.
On a phone I would want to avoid any symbols or uppercase that require an extra button press. And you don't have to worry about vertical space so I would arrange it a bit differently.
I could have a generic template called "note_template" with the first row B = blinds, S = my stack, E = eff. stack, P = my relative position, second S = my seat number, BTN = seat number of BTN, H = my hand, Vh = villains' hands (if shown), seven blank rows for the action, and 9 more rows to take notes on player type (if desired). It would look like this:
B S E P S BTN H Vh Vh
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
------------------
Then to record a hand I open the template, fill it out as follows (note C=call, F=fold, B=bet, X=check, AI=allin, W=win, L=lose, T=tie, P=pot size, H=hero), then save as notes5-29-1734 (just date plus 24-hour time to keep them ordered, alternatively you could just do 5-29-01, 5-29-02, etc.)
So filled out it might look like this (leave capslock on for readability if preferred):
B 1/2 S 400 E 300 P 4 S 9 BTN 3 H AADS Vh J7HD Vh
67C 8F HB 15 347C
A74HCC P47
47X HB 30 37C
JS P107
7X HB 75 3C
2S P257
HAI 3C HW
1B TP MAWG
2O LAG MAAAG
3T LP YMEG
4B TP OWG
5NR MAAG
6E TAG YAG
7B LP MAWW
8G TAG MALG
9H
The player abbreviations used here are T=terrible, B=bad, O=okay (slightly losing to break-even), G=good (break even to modest winner), E=excellent (solid winner), TP=tight passive, LAG=loose aggressive, LP=loose passive, NR=no read TAG=tight aggressive, then the 3-4 letter abbreviations are M=middle aged, Y=young, O=old AA=African American, A=Asian, ME=middle eastern, L=Latino, W=White, G=Guy, W=Woman. Note I would copy paste this section to the next notes and just edit any seats that changed or if reads changed, to avoid typing this every hand.
With a notebook I would just update the 1-9 section if anything changed, and only for the seats where that changed, then the reads could be reconstructed easily later.
I still prefer the notebook approach, but there are obvious advantages to phones like copy paste, no line limit, less conspicuous. I have a 5x3 notebook I'm using right now and it has 17 lines which is JUST enough to get all these lines with no spaces. I think a bit larger notebook would be better, as long as it's not so large it won't fit in my pocket comfortably, so I can add more specific player notes like "blinks more when hand is weak" or "can't talk coherently when bluffing" for example