Session Review and Note taking:

So all the other COTW focused on theory and putting more tools into your poker tool box. This COTW is more of a PSA on what you should be doing to improve and should help you improve your game the quickest.

Reviewing sessions and taking notes is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your poker game, along with coaching and sweat sessions. It’s not hard to do, it just takes work and discipline. Most of the players reading this will probably glance over this and go, “yeah, but I will take notes, when I don’t want to play, drink, go out with friends, organize my Clay Aikens iTunes library, etc.”.

I will share with the forum, what I do and hopefully everyone can give some good tips on what they find helpful. I use PT3, so keep that in mind.

What you need:
1) Checking your ego at the door
2) Notepad (could be a file your computer)
3) Calculator
4) A tracker (PT3 or HEM)
5) Programs such as Pokerstove and Flopzilla
6) Your favorite beverage (optional)

The first type of review I like to do, is a post session review. The purpose of this review is to look at how you played while you have your thought process fresh in your mind.

In PT3, while I am playing, I mark hands that I want to review during play. After my session, I run a report that filters out all these hands. Usually, these are odd spots that I wasn’t sure about my play, I may think about getting a 2nd opinion on, or I felt I donk up. I wouldn’t focus too much on these spots, as they are probably the 1% of the spots we face and shouldn’t have a huge impact to our bottom line. What you should be looking for though:

1) Was the PF range you assign to villain(s) fit their profile and their actual holdings?
2) What was the SPR? (I did this every time at first, eventually it became like breathing for me, and I now know SPR during the play for every hand I play)
3) Based on the actual range, and your range, what was your equity? (Pokerstove)
4) How did the betting action influence there continuation range? (Flopzilla)
5) What was your plan? Did you execute it?
6) Did you notice any leaks (missed value, loose call, misuse of FE, etc.) – note these in your notepad


These questions, you should be asking yourself for every hand you play, and I am just going to call them the standard list from here on.
Next I run a “big pot” report. For me this is any pot that is 30bb+. Win or lose the hand I am looking at the villains range vs. my range along with the standard questions. Most of the hands I should be looking at value, and if I got the most I could, and not at looking at bluffing spots. Remember in big pots we should have the goods more often than not, even if we are running a LAG/sLAG game, those bluffing pots should be small.

The next report I run, is all my hands 22+, AQ+, again I am looking for value and running some semibluffs when the opportunity presents themselves. Really look at your equity vs. villain range and think about hands that you should be semibluffing with, or floating with.


The final report I run is all my hands from CO,BTN,SB and Blinds. Here I am looking at stealing opportunities, resteals, squeezing, etc. I should be thinking of why/why not a made certain moves.

While that seems like a lot, eventually you will get a hang for it and should be able to review a 1K hand session in 20-30 minutes. Most of the decisions will seem routine, but they are and that is where most of the money is at the micros..Are we making the correct decisions for 99% of our play?

My next set of reviews I do 1-2 months, and I think is very beneficial as we move up through the stakes. This is villain review. Each month I take my top-10 villains (based on hands Play), and review all of their play. I look at all their showdown hands, BTN/CO and blind play. Then I take notes on how I think there VPIP/PFR ranges may be skewed from the standard stats, how they play draws, and what they stack off/call down with. I then break out Pokerstove and look for what hands have good equity and IO against them and take notes on them (I keep my notes in PT3 and have them displayed on my HUD). I also keep standard notes on them, which a good reference can be found on this very good post by

Zeth http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...-tl-dr-332863/.

While this is a lot of work, its important as its the only exploitative strategy you should be employing. Start off small, first take notes on the top 3 villains then work your way down the list until you have your top 10 cover. Then review those notes, and start going down the list. And my coming up with plans ahead of time, you can look for opportunities when they present themselves against the players you face the most. I also believe this is the only range balancing we need at the micros, you can play standard straight forward against everyone else, then the few (and I mean few) times you exploit the right opportunities will give you the balance you need to change your table image. I recently stacked a villain with 97s in a 3bet pot for 200bb based on this, while the play in a vacuum was 0EV, against his play in 3bet pots it was +EV and unfortunately for him he happen to have the TOP-TOP of his range when I hit gin.

The next type of villain review, is look at the top 5 villains you are a loser too. Look at their play, and try to determine what they are thinking and looking at. You should be able to come up with a way to neutralize their WR against you (if you are having trouble, talk to someone else and get their thoughts), and may be even to give yourself a slight edge. While you may not feel like adding these players to your buddy list, you should no longer fear them and avoid a juicy table just b/c they are sitting down. (we are play FR, no need to have a grudge).

The final type of review I do, is to look at the top 20 SSer I face. Basically I take notes on their limping/raising/stealing/restealling range, use pokerstove to determine when I have equity, then put these directly into the notes. While this is really boring, you should be +$ against ssers at the micros (most of them are robotic and have leaks, and the good ones are playing higher stakes). I believe doing this work ahead of time will keep you out of spite calls, and will show you how to get their widest range into the middle.

TL,DR.

Cliffnotes;
Stop being lazy, review your play and take notes.

GL at the tables.

First. I had my eye on this one since I first joined 2+2. Can't wait to read!

Wow that's impressive-makes me feel pretty lazy about my own note taking and session reviewing.

How do you get your top 10 villains from PT3?

awesomeness, great post.

First have any filters you want (such as stake, since a date, etc.).

Then just got to the 'Summary' tab and click on 'hands' to sort. You should be first, then your villains.

Nice post Sam. I do the session reviews the same as you, but the villain reviews are a new wrinkle I'll have to spend some time on.

Nice post, makes me feel inadequate in my prep.

Got some homework to do.

Very nice. Looking forward to implementing this.

great post bringing up new thoughts.
when do you think you should start with this "intense" villain review? i mean.. on nl2 it´s just dumping time as there are so many. same goes with nl5 for the most part.

maybe nl10 or nl25?

somebody got HEM and like to share their thoughts about getting the most out of it?

Brilliant-thanks, that was embarrassingly easy-thought I'd have to run some kind of report or something

Very nice post. I thought I had a handle on post-session review but it appears I'm a lazy bum

I was actually working on note-taking last week. In addition to Zeths article I also found this two part article by Freakdaddy useful: part 1, part 2.

I've also been practicing note-taking during play. This is a good exercise I think. Start up a small number of tables (2-4) and play a session where you focus almost entirely on taking notes on villains for an hour. You should have several good notes on every player at your tables by the end of the hour. Now focus on using those notes for the next hour. I.e. before every decision you make, you have to consult the notes that you have on villain. It's fun because a lot of villains play the same way in the same spot over and over. So once you have a good note on them you can exploit them relentlessly.

perfect post, i was waiting exactly for something like that.

i had and still have some leaks in my game i couldnt find by going through single hands (with a review player). what helped me was to go through all hands of each session where i saw the flop, sorted by winning/loosings (i am using holdem manager) and look for a "systematic" flaw.

1) i sort by 1st winning hands (usd) and then by loosing hands
2) i mark all where profit/loss other than zero (and unmark the ones without flop)
3) i copy all the hand histories in a poker hand converter, then i mark all of this stuff and put it into word


4) then i print it out and shortly go through all hands.

i do not go through the details here (this i do for the marked hands), but i mark on the printout all moves i find akward (or just plain stupid). i could then see some pattern emerging, which i did not notice when going through each hand individually.

+ i recommend having some fruit while doing this, this is highly +healty

Great post Sammy. You and I have almost identical approaches to reviewing. A couple quick thoughts, some of which repeat what you said.

- When I moved from sngs to cash, I learned very quickly that the vast majority of players don't do any sort of review. I compare it to playing golf. You need to spend time on the range to learn how/when/why to hit the shots. Then when you get on the course you just play. But most players just sit down, bash out 4k hand seshs/ 10k hand days and are too wasted at the end to spend time learning. Cut out that last 30 minutes of playing and start to do the things that Sammy suggests. You'll be amazed at the results.

- Studying isn't talking on AIM, watching a vid and flipping thru the BBV. Personally I spend about an hour of time working on my game for every 3-4 hours playing. And that's time I take very seriously.

- Villian reviews are so valuable. I take very few notes at the table. Table time is for playing. Away from the table is when I take 95% of my notes. It does a couple things for me. One, it reveals the lines they like to take so I can range them better. Two, it helps my confidence cus I see everyone make horrible mistakes. When I'm running bad it helps me realize that I'm not the only one that plays hands poorly at times.

- Monthly reviews are long and involved for me and they help to set up a plan for the next month. Usually I'll spot 2-3 things that I want to work on during the next month. For example, a constant struggle for me is my river aggression; balancing c/c lines with b/f lines. So, during the next month in my session reviews, I'll take every hand that went to the river and see if I lost value. I'll also look at players who's game I respect and look at their river actions.

Anything I can to help, Rusty.

If you are going to spend any volume at a level, then do a session review, Maybe its not your top 10 villains, but at a minimum I would review the villains you play 5% of your hands against.

Worst case is that you never see them again, but you practice your skill at assigning ranges, which I firmly believe if you are good at this you will be a winner at every stake, and all game conditions.

Very nice post, I'm waiting ages for that CotW.

I invest quite a time in postsession-analysis, but not nearly as good as introduced in OP. Fwiw most of the time i only mark hands where i want to write notes about villains. These notes are another topic. I have read a lot of posts in many 2+2 (sub)forums, but still havent decided what works best for me. So it varies, sometimes i prefer just short and concise notes, but most of the time I write down the whole action of some hands, with exact betsizing, weather and the chances of rain. This messes up my HUD but gives me the most information.

My next session review will be like in OP.

I'm becoming more and more of a believer that assigning ranges and reading hands isn't a part of poker. It IS poker. (Well, that and learning how to play against these hand ranges) Everyone gets the same cards. We are all going to be on both sides of the pocket aces versus a set. A good poker player doesn't make money by coolering opponents. He does it by playing optimally against an opponent's hand range.

Now this is pretty difficult to do without a lot of practice. It's very villain dependent and situation dependent. If you're playing against a person who you can read better than he can read you, then you will profit off him in the long run.

If you can do this, you can start doing all the little things to increase your BB/100 rate and you can stop worrying about trying to find situations to fold your pocket Ks preflop.

I kind of disagree with this. I think it's important to take notes while you're playing, especially against fish. I can accept that it's better to take notes against regs away from the table as you need to look at a lot of hands to get a handle on their ranges etc.

However vs a fish, there's a good chance that you'll never play against them again. And they're the easiest money you can get in poker and a lot of the time you can see exploitable play by them very quickly. So I think you're missing out by not not all the tendencies you spot for fish and non-regs immediately.

I also find taking notes while playing helps keep me focused on the play and avoid getting bored.

When I'm sitting at tables and waiting for a hand to play, I'll usually pop up the detailed stats on the players I have a lot of hands with and scour them to see what I can find. We all are experts at analyzing preflop stats and even flop stats, but we don't have turn and river stats readily available on the HUD, at least I don't. I'll go through and see if I can find how they play turns and rivers. This is something that helps me a lot with hand reading and narrowing down their range.

Very helpful post . . . excellent addition to CotW.

i for one need to utilize more review sessions than i do... right now it seems i want to get hands in instead of reviewing... that being said, another good thing to review are the medium to small sized pots, because shipping with AA/KK, NFD's etc, is pretty straight forward... but the medium pots, are you stabbing at them, folding to often, etc... these add up.

nice post SammyG!!!

finally the one cotw i have been waiting for has arrived! thanks so much for this one sammy. i never ever do session review because i get so caught up with other things but it really is a major leak. i always tell myself when i move up i will but it just never happens.

I love this CoTW! Did you make your own PT3 reports? Download them from the repository? I have yet to make use of reports (besides a VPP report I tweaked to correct the VPPs for full ring).

It would be great if you made a short video showing your reports. Of course you might not want people looking at your DB ...

Thanks again for a great CoTW.

This COTW has already helped me. I did some session reviews and found a reg who always mr pre with weak hands (small pp, AQ or worse) and always raises 3.5x with jj+. So next time he was sitting to my right and min raised I did not even look at my cards (ok this is bit hard to do online...i had K6o but you get my point)...and I raised it up. He called me but I cbet it and took it down....wooot! I am definetly gona abuse the crap out of this reg.

Be on the lookout for an adjustment by villain.