I'm pretty new to live poker though I've been playing online for awhile. I'm realizing that my memory is awful when it comes to recalling what happened in a specific hand, even immediately after the hand is over.

The thing is, I'm paying attention to every hand, following the pot size and bet sizing, noting who raised and who called, but then at showdown I have a lot of trouble working back over the hand, remembering the flop, and what actions a player took given the hand he had. This is more of an issue for me with players who are playing very loose pre-flop. With someone who is playing tight, I can assign them a range pre and work from there, and I can recall the board as how it may have hit or missed that range. But with calling stations or loose fish in general, I feel like they could just have anything. I have no idea what they're thinking when they're betting or why. I have no idea whether they actually have some kind of made hand, or are drawing.

In short, does anyone have any tips for remembering how hands were played out, so I can draw conclusions that will help me in later hands?

That's tough man... I'm not sure that there is some sort of way to inherently improve your memory if you are having trouble remembering things that happened immediately after the hand. I can personally remember the specific details of hands that I played months/years ago. I think the reason why is that each hand is like a little story, where each piece of the story corresponds to the previous and next part. So once the story starts, my mind naturally retrieves the next piece of relevant info. The key is that all the specific links in the chain are connected, if you gave me a list of numbers with seemingly no connection between them, I would have a difficult time remembering the sequence.

Good luck assigning any logic to most Rec players.


As far as recall, memory is like any physical pursuit. It's developed through practice and repetition. Some people are more gifted than others, but everyone can improve teir memory through practice. Just keep putting in the effort and it will improve.

Yeah this is also how it is for me when I'm playing against competent opponents. But against fish I can't or don't know how to assign meanings to their actions, and there's no story to be had. I think I'm just going to have to try changing the way I pay attention to the hands, and experiment.

Bet sizing also kind of throws a wrench into it for me, for many players who don't size relative to the pot, it's like an entire different psychology that I don't understand. I may just have to take it slow, ignore the things that don't make sense to me at the time so at the end of the hand I can remember the basics.

Wait... are you having trouble remembering hands? Or ranging loose players? The two are completely separate.

Coming from an online background I too have trouble remembering hands/the action cause I'm so used to robotically multitabling then looking up interesting hands in the replayer. I find myself often asking my neighbours "he limped KK?" So I'd be very interested in how to pay more attention to and actually remember these things as well as their bet sizings.

I tend to remember non-standard lines, like someone raising to 12x with JJ after two limpers then showing cause they "didn't want to see a flop". Or someone betting 1/4 pot on flop/turn/river with top set cause they "didn't want to scare him off".

You can take notes on paper or on a tablet. Try to re-narrate each street in your head as the next card is flipped. Activate your mental imagery and have a mental movie replay your narration. At the end of the hand, narrate the entire thing, picturing it in your mind as it happened. I worked at a private learning center where our programs for memory, comprehension, and higher order thinking all focused around vivid and actual concept imagery. The worst thing you can do is assume that you cannot improve your mental capacities. Change will happen as you work on it.

OP, we're glad you're here, but if it's a general question (rather than a specific hand), please use the search function before starting a thread. In this case, the key word "memory" would give you this excellent thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...memory-865273/

You can also try the key words "remember" and "notes."

If you have further questions about memory improvement after reading that thread, please bump it with your additional question, keeping the discussion in one place.